'^^^mj 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW 


Sr  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

HERETICS. 

ORTHODOXY. 

THE  NAPOLEON  OF  NOTTING 
HILL:  A  Romance.  Illustrated  by 
W.  Graham  Robertson. 

ALL  THINGS  CONSIDERED. 

THE  BALL  AND  THE  CROSS. 


GEORGE  BERNARD 

::  SHAW  :: 


By 

GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON 


NEW   YORK  :   JOHN   LANE   COMPANY 
MCMX 


COPYRIGHT,   1909,  BY 
JOHN    LANE    COMPANY 


REP.  CZK.  LI 3. 
ACCESS.  NO. 


Gin 


THE   PLIMPTON  PRESS,   NORWOOD,   MASS, 


ftr" 


653,4- 


Introduction  to  the  First  Edition 


MOST  people  either  say  that  they 
agree  with  Bernard  Shaw  or  that 
they  do  not  understand  him.  I 
am  the  only  person  who  understands  him,  and 
I  do  not  agree  with  him. 


G.  K.  C. 


S^8S03?e2 


The  Problem  of  a  Preface 


A  PECULIAR  difficulty  arrests  the 
writer  of  this  rough  study  at  the 
very  start.  Many  people  know 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  chiefly  as  a  man 
who  would  write  a  very  long  preface  even  to  a 
very  short  play.  And  there  is  truth  in  the 
idea;  he  is  indeed  a  very  prefatory  sort  of 
person.  He  always  gives  the  explanation 
before  the  incident;  but  so,  for  the  matter 
of  that,  does  the  Gospel  of  St.  John.  For 
Bernard  Shaw,  as  for  the  mystics,  Christian  and 
heathen  (and  Shaw  is  best  described  as  a 
heathen  mystic),  the  philosophy  of  facts  is 
anterior  to  the  facts  themselves.  In  due  time  we 
come  to  the  fact,  the  incarnation;  but  in  the 
beginning  was  the  Word. 

This  produces  upon  many  minds  an  impres- 
sion of  needless  preparation  and  a  kind  of 
bustling  proHxity.  But  the  truth  is  that  the  1 
very  rapidity  of  such  a  man's  mind  makes 
him  seem  slow  in  getting  to  the  point.  It  is 
positively  because  he  is  quick-witted  that  he  is 
long-winded.  A  quick  eye  for  ideas  may 
actually   make   a   writer  slow  in   reaching  his 

7 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


goal,  just  as  a  quick  eye  for  landscapes  might 
Lmake   a    motorist   slow   in    reaching   Brighton. 
An  original  man  has  to  pause  at  every  allusion 
or  simile   to   re-explain   historical   parallels,   to 
re-shape  distorted  words.     Any  ordinary  leader- 
writer    (let    us    say)    might   write    swiftly    and 
smoothly    something    Hke    this:  **The    element 
of  religion  in  the   Puritan  rebellion,  if  hostile 
to    art,    yet    saved    the    movement    from    some 
of  the   evils   in   which   the   French   Revolution 
involved  morality."    Now  a  man  like  Mr.  Shaw, 
who  has  his  own  views  on  everything,  would 
be  forced  to  make  the  sentence  long  and  broken 
instead   of  swift  and   smooth.     He  would   say 
something    like:    **The    element    of    religion, 
as  I  explain  religion,  in  the  Puritan  rebellion 
(which  you  wholly  misunderstand)  if  hostile  to 
art — that  is  what  I  mean  by  art — may  have  saved 
it  from  some  evils  (remember  my  definition  of 
evil)  in  which  the  French  Revolution — of  which 
I    have    my    own    opinion — involved    morality, 
which  I  will  define  for  you  in  a  minute."    That 
is  the  worst  of  being  a  really  universal  sceptic 
and   philosopher;  it  is   such   slow  work.     The 
very  forest  of  the  man's  thoughts  chokes  up 
his   thoroughfare.     A   man   must   be  orthodox 
upon  most  things,  or  he  will  never  even  have 
time  to  preach  his  own  heresy. 

8 


The  Problem  of  a  Preface 


Now  the  same  difficulty  which  affects  the 
work  of  Bernard  Shaw  affects  also  any  book 
about  him.  There  is  an  unavoidable  artistic 
necessity  to  put  the  preface  before  the  play; 
that  is,  there  is  a  necessity  to  say  something 
of  what  Bernard  Shaw's  experience  means 
before  one  even  says  what  it  was.  We  have 
to  mention  what  he  did  when  we  have  already 
explained  why  he  did  it.  Viewed  superficially, 
his  life  consists  of  fairly  conventional  incidents, 
and  might  easily  fall  under  fairly  conventional 
phrases.  It  might  be  the  life  of  any  Dublin 
clerk  or  Manchester  Socialist  or  London 
author.  If  I  touch  on  the  man's  life  before 
his  work,  it  will  seem  trivial;  yet  taken  with 
his  work  it  is  most  important.  In  short,  one 
could  scarcely  know  what  Shaw's  doings  meant 
unless  one  knew  what  he  meant  by  them. 
This  difficulty  in  mere  order  and  construction 
has  puzzled  me  very  much.  I  am  going  to 
overcome  it,  clumsily  perhaps,  but  in  the  way 
which  affects  me  as  most  sincere.  Before 
I  write  even  a  slight  suggestion  of  his  relation 
to  the  stage,  I  am  going  to  vvrite  of  three  soils 
or  atmospheres  out  of  which  that  relation 
grew.  In  other  words,  before  I  write  of  Shaw 
I  will  write  of  the  three  great  influences  upon 
Shaw.     They  were   all  three  there   before   he 

9 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


was  born,  yet  each  one  of  them  is  himself  and 
a  very  vivid  portrait  of  him  from  one  point 
of  view.  I  have  called  these  three  traditions: 
"The  Irishman,"  '*The  Puritan,"  and  "The 
Progressive."  I  do  not  see  how  this  prefatory 
theorising  is  to  be  avoided;  for  if  I  simply 
said,  for  instance,  that  Bernard  Shaw  was  an 
Irishman,  the  impression  produced  on  the 
reader  might  be  remote  from  my  thought  and, 
what  is  more  important,  from  Shaw's.  People 
might  think,  for  instance,  that  I  meant  that  he 
was  "irresponsible."  That  would  throw  out 
the  whole  plan  of  these  pages,  for  if  there 
is  one  thing  that  Shaw  is  not,  it  is  irresponsible. 
The  responsibiHty  in  him  rings  like  steel.  Or, 
again,  if  I  simply  called  him  a  Puritan,  it 
might  mean  something  about  nude  statues  or 
"prudes  on  the  prowl."  Or  if  I  called  him 
a  Progressive,  it  might  be  supposed  to  mean 
that  he  votes  for  Progressives  at  the  County 
Council  election,  which  I  very  much  doubt. 
I  have  no  other  course  but  this:  of  briefly 
explaining  such  matters  as  Shaw  himself  might 
explain  them.  Some  fastidious  persons  may 
object  to  my  thus  putting  the  moral  in  front 
of  the  fable.  Some  may  imagine  in  their 
innocence  that  they  already  understand  the 
word    Puritan    or    the    yet    more    mysterious 

10 


The  Problem  of  a  Preface 


word  Irishman.  The  only  person,  indeed, 
of  whose  approval  I  feel  fairly  certain  is 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  himself,  the  man  of  many 
introductions. 


II 


CONTENTS 


Page 

Introduction  to  the  First  Edition     ....  5 

The   Problem  of  a  Preface 7 

The  Irishman 17 

The  Puritan       34 

The  Progressive 53 

The  Critic 87 

The  Dramatist 114 

The   Philosopher 165 


13 


GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW 


GEORGE    BERNARD 

: :  SHAW  : : 

The  Irishman 


THE  English  public  has  commonly 
professed,  with  a  kind  of  pride, 
that  it  cannot  understand  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw.  There  are  many 
reasons  for  it  which  ought  to  be  adequately 
considered  in  such  a  book  as  this.  But  the 
first  and  most  obvious  reason  is  the  mere 
statement  that  George  Bernard  Shaw  was  born 
in  Dublin  in  1856.  At  least  one  reason  why 
Englishmen  cannot  understand  Mr.  Shaw  is 
that  Englishmen  have  never  taken  the  trouble 
to  understand  Irishmen.  They  will  some- 
times be  generous  to  Ireland;  but  never  just 
to  Ireland.  They  will  speak  to  Ireland;  they 
will  speak  for  Ireland;  but  they  will  not  hear 
Ireland  speak.  All  the  real  amiability  which 
most  Englishmen  undoubtedly  feel  towards 
Irishmen  is  lavished  upon  a  class  of  Irishmen 
which     unfortunately     does     not     exist.       The 

B  17 


George  Bernard  SJiaw 


Irishman  of  the  English  farce,  with  his  brogue, 
his  buoyancy,  and  his  tender-hearted  irrespon- 
sibiHty,  is  a  man  who  ought  to  have  been 
thoroughly  pampered  with  praise  and  sym- 
pathy, if  he  had  only  existed  to  receive  them. 
Unfortunately,  all  the  time  that  we  were 
creating  a  comic  Irishman  in  fiction,  we  were 
creating  a  tragic  Irishman  in  fact.  Never 
perhaps  has  there  been  a  situation  of  such 
excruciating  cross-purposes  even  in  the  three- 
act  farce.  The  more  we  saw  in  the  Irishman  a 
sort  of  warm  and  weak  fidelity,  the  more  he 
regarded  us  with  a  sort  of  icy  anger.  The 
more  the  oppressor  looked  down  with  an 
amiable  pity,  the  more  did  the  oppressed  look 
down  with  a  somewhat  unamiable  contempt. 
But,  indeed,  it  is  needless  to  say  that  such 
comic  cross-purposes  could  be  put  into  a 
play;  they  have  been  put  into  a  play.  They 
have  been  put  into  what  is  perhaps  the  most 
real  of  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw's  plays,  John  BulFs 
Other  Island. 

It  is  somewhat  absurd  to  imagine  that  any 
one  who  has  not  read  a  play  by  Mr.  Shaw  will 
be  reading  a  book  about  him.  But  if  it  comes 
to  that  it  is  (as  I  clearly  perceive)  absurd  to 
be  writing  a  book  about  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  at 
all.      It   is   indefensibly   foolish   to   attempt  to 

i8 


The  Irishman 


explain  a  man  whose  whole  object  through  life 
has  been  to  explain  himself.  But  even  in  non- 
sense there  is  a  need  for  logic  and  consistency; 
therefore  let  us  proceed  on  the  assumption 
that  w^hen  I  say  that  all  Mr.  Shaw's  blood  and 
origin  may  be  found  in  John  BulFs  Other  Island, 
some  reader  may  answer  that  he  does  not 
know  the  play.  Besides,  it  is  more  important 
to  put  the  reader  right  about  England  and 
Ireland  even  than  to  put  him  right  about 
Shaw.  If  he  reminds  me  that  this  is  a  book 
about  Shaw,  I  can  only  assure  him  that  I  will 
reasonably,  and  at  proper  intervals,  remember 
the  fact. 

Mr.  Shaw  himself  said  once,  "I  am  a  typical 
Irishman;  my  family  came  from  Yorkshire." 
Scarcely  anyone  but  a  typical  Irishman  could 
have  made  the  remark.  It  is  in  fact  a  bull,  a 
conscious  bull.  A  bull  is  only  a  paradox 
which  people  are  too  stupid  to  understand.  It 
is  the  rapid  summary  of  something  which  is  at 
once  so  true  and  so  complex  that  the  speaker 
who  has  the  swift  intelligence  to  perceive  it, 
has  not  the  slow  patience  to  explain  it.  Mys- 
tical dogmas  are  much  of  this  kind.  Dog- 
mas are  often  spoken  of  as  if  they  were  signs 
of  the  slowness  or  endurance  of  the  human 
mind.     As  a  matter  of  fact,  they  are  marks  of 

19 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


mental  promptitude  and  lucid  impatience.  A 
man  will  put  his  meaning  mystically  because 
he  cannot  waste  time  in  putting  it  rationally. 
Dogmas  are  not  dark  and  mysterious;  rather 
a  dogma  Is  like  a  flash  of  lightning — an  instan- 
taneous lucidity  that  opens  across  a  whole 
landscape.  Of  the  same  nature  are  Irish  bulls; 
they  are  summaries  which  are  too  true  to  be 
consistent.  The  Irish  make  Irish  bulls  for  the 
same  reason  that  they  accept  Papal  bulls.  It  is 
because  It  Is  better  to  speak  wisdom  foolishly, 
like  the  Saints,  rather  than  to  speak  folly 
wisely,  like  the  Dons. 

This  Is  the  truth  about  mystical  dogmas 
and  the  truth  about  Irish  bulls;  It  Is  also  the 
truth  about  the  paradoxes  of  Bernard  Shaw. 
Each  of  them  Is  an  argument  Impatiently 
shortened  into  an  epigram.  Each  of  them 
represents  a  truth  hammered  and  hardened, 
with  an  almost  disdainful  violence  until  it  is 
compressed  Into  a  small  space,  until  It  Is  made 
brief  and  almost  incomprehensible.  The  case 
of  that  curt  remark  about  Ireland  and  York- 
shire is  a  very  typical  one.  If  Mr.  Shav/  had 
really  attempted  to  set  out  all  the  sensible 
stages  of  his  joke,  the  sentence  would  have 
run  something  like  this:  "That  I  am  an 
Irishman  is  a  fact  of  psychology  which  I  can 

20 


The  Irishman 


trace  In  many  of  the  things  that  come  out  of 
me,  my  fastidiousness,  my  frigid  fierceness 
and  my  distrust  of  mere  pleasure.  But  the 
thing  must  be  tested  by  what  comes  from  me; 
do  not  try  on  me  the  dodge  of  asking  where 
I  came  from,  how  many  batches  of  three  hun- 
dred and  sixty-five  days  my  family  was  in 
Ireland.  Do  not  play  any  games  on  me  about 
whether  I  am  a  Celt,  a  word  that  is  dim  to  the 
anthropologist  and  utterly  unmeaning  to  any- 
body else.  Do  not  start  any  drivelling  dis- 
cussions about  whether  the  word  Shaw  is 
German  or  Scandinavian  or  Iberian  or  Basque. 
You  know  you  are  human;  I  know  I  am 
Irish.  I  know  I  belong  to  a  certain  type  and 
temper  of  society;  and  I  know  that  all  sorts 
of  people  of  all  sorts  of  blood  live  in  that 
society  and  by  that  society;  and  are  therefore 
Irish.  You  can  take  your  books  of  anthro- 
pology to  hell  or  to  Oxford."  Thus  gently, 
elaborately  and  at  length,  Mr.  Shaw  would 
have  explained  his  meaning,  if  he  had  thought 
it  worth  his  while.  As  he  did  not  he  merely 
flung  the  symbolic,  but  very  complete  sentence, 
"I  am  a  typical  Irishman;  my  family  came 
from  Yorkshire." 

What  then  is  the  colour  of  this  Irish  society 
of  which  Bernard  Shaw,  with  all  his  individual 

21 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


oddity,  is  yet  an  essential  type  ?  One  generali- 
sation, I  think,  may  at  least  be  made.  Ireland 
has  in  it  a  quality  which  caused  it  (in  the  most 
ascetic  age  of  Christianity)  to  be  called  the 
"Land  of  Saints";  and  which  still  might  give 
it  a  claim  to  be  called  the  Land  of  Virgins. 
An  Irish  Catholic  priest  once  said  to  me, 
"There  is  in  our  people  a  fear  of  the  passions 
which  is  older  even  than  Christianity."  Every- 
one who  has  read  Shaw's  play  upon  Ireland 
will  remember  the  thing  in  the  horror  of  the 
Irish  girl  at  being  kissed  in  the  public  streets. 
But  anyone  who  knows  Shaw's  work  will 
recognize  it  in  Shaw  himself.  There  exists 
by  accident  an  early  and  beardless  portrait  of 
him  which  really  suggests  in  the  severity  and 
purity  of  its  lines  some  of  the  early  ascetic 
pictures  of  the  beardless  Christ.  However  he 
may  shout  profanities  or  seek  to  shatter  the 
shrines,  there  is  always  something  about  him 
which  suggests  that  in  a  sweeter  and  more 
solid  civilisation  he  would  have  been  a  great 
saint.  He  would  have  been  a  saint  of  a  sternly 
ascetic,  perhaps  of  a  sternly  negative  type. 
But  he  has  this  strange  note  of  the  saint  in 
him:  that  he  is  literally  unworldly.  Worldli- 
ness  has  no  human  magic  for  him;  he  is  not 
bewitched  by  rank  nor  drawn  on  by  conviviality 

22 


The  Irishman 


at  all.  He  could  not  understand  the  intel- 
lectural  surrender  of  the  snob.  He  Is  perhaps 
a  defective  character;  but  he  is  not  a  mixed 
one.  All  the  virtues  he  has  are  heroic  virtues. 
Shaw  is  like  the  Venus  of  ]\Iilo;  all  that  there 
is  of  him  is  admirable. 

But  In  any  case  this  Irish  innocence  is 
peculiar  and  fundamental  in  him;  and  strange 
as  It  may  sound,  I  think  that  his  Innocence  has 
a  great  deal  to  do  with  his  suggestions  of 
sexual  revolution.  Such  a  man  is  comparatively 
audacious  in  theory  because  he  is  comparatively 
clean  in  thought.  Powerful  men  who  have 
povN^erful  passions  use  m.uch  of  their  strength 
in  forging  chains  for  themselves;  they  alone 
know  how  strong  the  chains  need  to  be.  But 
there  are  other  souls  who  walk  the  w^oods  like 
Diana,  with  a  sort  of  wild  chastity.  I  confess 
I  think  that  this  Irish  purity  a  little  disables  a 
critic  in  dealing,  as  Air.  Shaw  has  dealt,  with 
the  roots  and  reality  of  the  marriage  law. 
He  forgets  that  those  fierce  and  elementary 
functions  which  drive  the  universe  have  an 
impetus  which  goes  beyond  itself  and  cannot 
always  easily  be  recovered.  So  the  healthiest 
men  may  often  erect  a  law  to  watch  them, 
just  as  the  healthiest  sleepers  may  want  an 
alarum    clock    to    wake    them    up.      However 

23 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


this  may  be,  Bernard  Shaw  certainly  has  all 
the  virtues  and  all  the  powers  that  go  with  this 
original  quality  in  Ireland.  One  of  them  is  a 
sort  of  awful  elegance;  a  dangerous  and  some- 
what inhuman  daintiness  of  taste  which  some- 
times seems  to  shrink  from  matter  itself,  as 
though  it  were  mud.  Of  the  many  sincere 
things  Mr.  Shaw  has  said  he  never  said 
a  more  sincere  one  than  when  he  stated  he 
was  a  vegetarian,  not  because  eating  meat 
was  bad  morality,  but  because  it  was  bad  taste. 
It  would  be  fanciful  to  say  that  Mr.  Shaw  is  a 
vegetarian  because  he  comes  of  a  race  of 
vegetarians,  of  peasants  who  are  compelled  to 
accept  the  simple  life  in  the  shape  of  potatoes. 
But  I  am  sure  that  his  fierce  fastidiousness  in 
such  matters  is  one  of  the  allotropic  forms  of 
the  Irish  purity;  it  is  to  the  virtue  of  Father 
Matthew  what  a  coal  is  to  a  diamond.  It  has, 
of  course,  the  quality  common  to  all  special 
and  unbalanced  types  of  virtue,  that  you  never 
know  where  it  will  stop.  I  can  feel  what  Mr. 
Shaw  probably  means  when  he  says  that  it  is 
disgusting  to  feast  off  dead  bodies,  or  to  cut 
lumps  off  what  was  once  a  living  thing.  But 
I  can  never  know  at  what  moment  he  may  not 
feel  in  the  same  way  that  it  is  disgusting  to 
mutilate    a    pear-tree,    or   to    root   out   of  the 

24 


The  Irishman 


earth  those  miserable  mandrakes  which  cannot 
even  groan.  There  is  no  natural  Hmit  to  this 
rush  and  riotous  gallop  of  refinement. 

But  it  is  not  this  physical  and  fantastic 
purity  which  I  should  chiefly  count  among  the 
legacies  of  the  old  Irish  morality.  A  much 
more  important  gift  is  that  which  all  the  saints 
declared  to  be  the  reward  of  chastity:  a  queer 
clearness  of  the  intellect,  like  the  hard  clear- 
ness of  a  crystal.  This  certainly  Mr.  Shaw 
possesses;  in  such  degree  that  at  certain  times 
the  hardness  seems  rather  clearer  than  the 
clearness.  But  so  it  does  in  all  the  most  typical 
Irish  characters  and  Irish  attitudes  of  mind. 
This  is  probably  why  Irishmen  succeed  so 
much  in  such  professions  as  require  a  certain 
crystalline  realism,  especially  about  results. 
Such  professions  are  the  soldier  and  the  law- 
yer; these  give  ample  opportunity  for  crimes 
but  not  much  for  mere  illusions.  If  you  have 
composed  a  bad  opera  you  may  persuade  your- 
self that  it  is  a  good  one;  if  you  have  carved 
a  bad  statue  you  can  think  yourself  better  than 
Michael  Angelo.  But  if  you  have  lost  a  battle 
you  cannot  believe  you  have  won  it;  if  your 
client  is  hanged  you  cannot  pretend  that  you 
have  got  him  off. 

There  must  be  some  sense  in  every  popular 

25 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


prejudice,  even  about  foreigners.  And  the 
English  people  certainly  have  somehow  got  an 
impression  and  a  tradition  that  the  Irishman 
is  genial,  unreasonable,  and  sentimental.  This 
legend  of  the  tender,  irresponsible  Paddy  has 
two  roots;  there  are  two  elements  in  the  Irish 
which  made  the  mistake  possible.  First,  the 
very  logic  of  the  Irishm.an  makes  him  regard 
war  or  revolution  as  extra-logical,  an  ultima 
ratio  w4iich  is  beyond  reason.  When  fighting 
a  powerful  enemy  he  no  more  worries  whether 
all  his  charges  are  exact  or  all  his  attitudes 
dignified  than  a  soldier  worries  whether  a 
cannon-ball  is  shapely  or  a  plan  of  campaign 
picturesque.  He  is  aggressive;  he  attacks. 
He  seems  merely  to  be  rowdy  in  Ireland 
when  he  is  really  carrying  the  war  into  Africa 
— or  England.  A  Dublin  tradesman  printed 
his  name  and  trade  in  archaic  Erse  on  his 
cart.  He  knew  that  hardly  anybody  could 
read  it;  he  did  it  to  annoy.  In  his  position 
I  think  he  was  quite  right.  When  one  is 
oppressed  it  is  a  mark  of  chivalry  to  hurt 
oneself  in  order  to  hurt  the  oppressor.  But 
the  English  (never  having  had  a  real  revolu- 
tion since  the  Middle  Ages)  find  it  very  hard 
to  understand  this  steady  passion  for  being  a 
nuisance,   and   mistake   it   for  mere  whimsical 

26 


The  Irishman 


impulsiveness  and  folly.  When  an  Irish 
member  holds  up  the  whole  business  of  the 
House  of  Commons  by  talking  of  his  bleed- 
ing country  for  five  or  six  hours,  the  simple 
English  members  suppose  that  he  is  a  senti- 
mentalist. The  truth  is  that  he  is  a  scornful 
realist  who  alone  remains  unaffected  by  the 
sentimentalism  of  the  House  of  Commons. 
The  Irishman  is  neither  poet  enough  nor 
snob  enough  to  be  swept  away  by  those 
smooth  social  and  historical  tides  and  tenden- 
cies which  carry  Radicals  and  Labour  members 
comfortably  off  their  feet.  He  goes  on  asking 
for  a  thing  because  he  wants  it;  and  he  tries 
really  to  hurt  his  enemies  because  they  are  his 
enemies.  This  is  the  first  of  the  queer  con- 
fusions which  make  the  hard  Irishman  look 
soft.  He  seems  to  us  wild  and  unreasonable 
because  he  is  really  much  too  reasonable  to  be 
anything  but  fierce  when  he  is  fighting. 

In  all  this  it  will  not  be  difficult  to  see  the 
Irishman  in  Bernard  Shaw.  Though  person- 
ally one  of  the  kindest  men  in  the  world, 
he  has  often  written  really  in  order  to  hurt; 
not  because  he  hated  any  particular  men  (he  is 
hardly  hot  and  animal  enough  for  that),  but 
because  he  really  hated  certain  ideas  even 
unto   slaying.      He    provokes;    he   will    not   let 

27 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


people  alone.  One  might  even  say  that  he 
bulHes,  only  that  this  would  be  unfair,  because 
he  always  wishes  the  other  man  to  hit  back. 
At  least  he  always  challenges,  like  a  true 
Green  Islander.  An  even  stronger  instance  of 
this  national  trait  can  be  found  in  another 
eminent  Irishman,  Oscar  Wilde.  His  philos- 
ophy (which  was  vile)  was  a  philosophy  of 
ease,  of  acceptance,  and  luxurious  illusion; 
yet,  being  Irish,  he  could  not  help  putting 
it  in  pugnacious  and  propagandist  epigrams. 
He  preached  his  softness  with  hard  decision; 
he  praised  pleasure  in  the  words  most  calcu- 
lated to  give  pain.  This  armed  insolence, 
which  was  the  noblest  thing  about  him,  was 
also  the  Irish  thing;  he  challenged  all  comers. 
It  is  a  good  instance  of  how  right  popular 
tradition  is  even  when  it  is  most  wrong,  that 
the  English  have  perceived  and  preserved  this 
essential  trait  of  Ireland  in  a  proverbial  phrase. 
It  is  true  that  the  Irishman  says,  "Who  will 
tread  on  the  tail  of  my  coat  ?" 

But  there  is  a  second  cause  which  creates 
the  English  fallacy  that  the  Irish  are  weak  and 
emotional.  This  again  springs  from  the  very 
fact  that  the  Irish  are  lucid  and  logical.  For 
being  logical  they  strictly  separate  poetry  from 
prose;   and   as  in  prose  they  are  strictly  pro- 

28 


The  Irishman 


saic,  so  in  poetry  they  are  purely  poetical.  In 
this,  as  in  one  or  two  other  things,  they  re- 
semble the  French,  who  make  their  gardens 
beautiful  because  they  are  gardens,  but  their 
fields  ugly  because  they  are  only  fields.  An 
Irishman  may  like  romance,  but  he  will  say, 
to  use  a  frequent  Shavian  phrase,  that  it  is 
"only  romance."  A  great  part  of  the  English 
energy  in  fiction  arises  from  the  very  fact  that 
their  fiction  half  deceives  them.  If  Rudyard 
Kipling,  for  instance,  had  written  his  short 
stories  in  France,  they  would  have  been 
praised  as  cool,  clever  little  works  of  art, 
rather  cruel,  and  very  nervous  and  feminine; 
Kipling's  short  stories  would  have  been  ap- 
preciated like  Maupassant's  short  stories.  In 
England  they  were  not  appreciated  but  be- 
lieved. They  were  taken  seriously  by  a 
startled  nation  as  a  true  picture  of  the  empire 
and  the  universe.  The  English  people  made 
haste  to  abandon  England  in  favour  of  Mr. 
Kipling  and  his  imaginary  colonies;  they 
made  haste  to  abandon  Christianity  in  favour 
of  Mr.  Kipling's  rather  morbid  version  of 
Judaism.  Such  a  moral  boom  of  a  book 
would  be  almost  impossible  in  Ireland,  be- 
cause the  Irish  mind  distinguishes  between 
life   and   literature.      Mr.    Bernard   Shaw   him- 

29 


George  Bernard  Shaiv 


self  summed  this  up  as  he  sums  up  so 
many  things  in  a  compact  sentence  which  he 
uttered  in  conversation  with  the  present 
writer,  ''An  Irishman  has  two  eyes."  He 
meant  that  with  one  eye  an  Irishman  saw  that 
a  dream  was  inspiring,  bewitching,  or  subHme, 
and  with  the  other  eye  that  after  all  it  was  a 
dream.  Both  the  humour  and  the  sentiment 
of  an  Englishman  cause  him  to  wink  the  other 
eye.  Two  other  small  examples  will  illustrate 
the  English  mistake.  Take,  for  instance,  that 
noble  survival  from  a  nobler  age  of  politics — 
I  mean  Irish  oratory.  The  English  imagine 
that  Irish  politicians  are  so  hot-headed  and 
poetical  that  they  have  to  pour  out  a  torrent 
of  burning  words.  The  truth  is  that  the 
Irish  are  so  clear-headed  and  critical  that  they 
still  regard  rhetoric  as  a  distinct  art,  as  the 
ancients  did.  Thus  a  man  makes  a  speech  as 
a  man  plays  a  violin,  not  necessarily  without 
feeling,  but  chiefly  because  he  knows  how  to 
do  it.  Another  instance  of  the  same  thing  is 
that  quality  which  is  always  called  the  Irish 
charm.  The  Irish  are  agreeable,  not  because 
they  are  particularly  emotional,  but  because  they 
are  very  highly  civilised.  Blarney  is  a  ritual; 
as  much  of  a  ritual  as  kissing  the  Blarney  Stone. 
Lastly,    there    is    one    general    truth    about 

30 


The  Irishman 


Ireland  which  may  very  well  have  influenced 
Bernard  Shaw  from  the  first;  and  almost 
certainly  influenced  him  for  good.  Ireland  is 
a  country  in  which  the  political  conflicts  are  at 
least  genuine;  they  are  about  something. 
They  are  about  patriotism,  about  religion,  or 
about  money:  the  three  great  realities.  In 
other  w^ords,  they  are  concerned  with  what 
commonwealth  a  man  lives  in  or  with  w^hat 
universe  a  man  lives  in  or  with  how  he  is  to 
manage  to  live  in  either.  But  they  are  not 
concerned  with  which  of  two  wealthy  cousins 
in  the  same  governing  class  shall  be  allowed 
to  bring  in  the  same  Parish  Councils  Bill; 
there  is  no  party  system  in  Ireland.  The  party 
system  in  England  is  an  enormous  and  most 
efficient  machine  for  preventing  political  con- 
flicts. The  party  system  is  arranged  on  the 
same  principle  as  a  three-legged  race:  the 
principle  that  union  is  not  always  strength  and 
is  never  activity.  Nobody  asks  for  what  he 
really  wants.  But  in  Ireland  the  loyalist  is 
just  as  ready  to  throw  over  the  King  as  the 
Fenian  to  throw  over  Mr.  Gladstone;  each 
wall  throw  over  anything  except  the  thing  that 
he  wants.  Hence  it  happens  that  even  the 
follies  or  the  frauds  of  Irish  politics  are  more 
genuine  as  symptoms  and  more  honourable  as 

31 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


symbols  than  the  lumbering  hypocrisies  of  the 
prosperous  Parliamentarian.  The  very  lies  of 
Dublin  and  Belfast  are  truer  than  the  truisms 
of  Westminster.  They  have  an  object;  they 
refer  to  a  state  of  things.  There  was  more 
honesty,  in  the  sense  of  actuality,  about 
Piggott's  letters  than  about  the  Times'  leading 
articles  on  them.  When  Parnell  said  calmly 
before  the  Royal  Commission  that  he  had 
made  a  certain  remark  *'in  order  to  mislead 
the  House"  he  proved  himself  to  be  one  of 
the  few  truthful  men  of  his  time.  An  ordinary 
British  statesman  would  never  have  made  the 
confession,  because  he  would  have  grown  quite 
accustomed  to  committing  the  crime.  The 
party  system  itself  implies  a  habit  of  stating 
something  other  than  the  actual  truth.  A 
Leader  of  the  House  means  a  Misleader  of 
the  House. 

Bernard  Shaw  was  born  outside  all  this; 
and  he  carries  that  freedom  upon  his  face. 
Whether  what  he  heard  in  boyhood  was 
violent  Nationalism  or  virulent  Unionism,  it 
was  at  least  something  which  wanted  a  certain 
principle  to  be  in  force,  not  a  certain  clique  to  be 
in  office.  Of  him  the  great  Gilbertian  general- 
isation is  untrue;  he  was  not  born  either  a 
little  Liberal  or  else  a  little  Conservative.     He 

32 


The  Irishman 


did  not,  like  most  of  us,  pass  through  the 
stage  of  being  a  good  party  man  on  his  way  to 
the  difficult  business  of  being  a  good  man. 
He  came  to  stare  at  our  general  elections  as  a 
Red  Indian  might  stare  at  the  Oxford  and 
Cambridge  boat-race,  blind  to  all  its  irrelevant 
sentimentalities  and  to  some  of  its  legitimate 
sentiments.  Bernard  Shaw  entered  England 
as  an  alien,  as  an  invader,  as  a  conqueror.  In 
other  words,  he  entered  England  as  an  Irish- 
man. 


22 


The  Puritan 


IT  has  been  said  in  the  first  section  that 
Bernard  Shaw  draws  from  his  own  nation 
two  unquestionable  qualities,  a  kind  of 
intellectual  chastity,  and  the  fighting 
spirit.  He  is  so  much  of  an  idealist  about  his 
ideals  that  he  can  be  a  ruthless  realist  in  his 
methods.  His  soul  has  (in  short)  the  virginity 
and  the  violence  of  Ireland.  But  Bernard 
Shaw  is  not  merely  an  Irishman;  he  is  not 
even  a  typical  one.  He  is  a  certain  separated 
and  peculiar  kind  of  Irishman,  which  is  not 
easy  to  describe.  Some  Nationalist  Irishmen 
have  referred  to  him  contemptuously  as  a 
"West  Briton."  But  this  is  really  unfair; 
for  whatever  Mr.  Shaw's  mental  faults  may  be, 
the  easy  adoption  of  an  unmeaning  phrase 
like  "Briton"  is  certainly  not  one  of  them. 
It  would  be  much  nearer  the  truth  to  put  the 
thing  in  the  bold  and  bald  terms  of  the  old 
Irish  song,  and  to  call  him  "The  anti-Irish 
Irishman."  But  it  is  only  fair  to  say  that  the 
description  is  far  less  of  a  monstrosity  than 
the  anti-English  EngHshman  would  be;  be- 
cause the  Irish  are  so  much  stronger  in  self- 
criticism.      Compared   with   the   constant  self- 

34 


The  Puritan 


flattery  of  the  English,  nearly  every  Irishman 
is  an  anti-Irish  Irishman.  But  here  asain 
popular  phraseology  hits  the  right  word.  This 
fairly  educated  and  fairly  wealthy  Protestant 
wedge  which  is  driven  into  the  country  at 
Dublin  and  elsewhere  is  a  thing  not  easy 
superficially  to  summarise  in  any  term.  It 
cannot  be  described  merely  as  a  minority;  for 
a  minority  means  the  part  of  a  nation  which  is 
conquered.  But  this  thing  means  something 
that  conquers,  and  is  not  entirely  part  of  a 
nation.  Nor  can  one  even  fall  back  on  the 
phrase  of  aristocracy.  For  an  aristocracy 
implies  at  least  some  chorus  of  snobbish  en- 
thusiasm; it  implies  that  some  at  least  are 
willingly  led  by  the  leaders,  if  only  towards 
vulgarity  and  vice.  There  is  only  one  word 
for  the  minority  in  Ireland,  and  that  is  the 
word  that  public  phraseology  has  found;  I 
mean  the  word  "Garrison."  The  Irish  are 
essentially  right  when  they  talk  as  if  all 
Protestant  Unionists  lived  inside  "The  Castle." 
They  have  all  the  virtues  and  limitations 
of  a  literal  garrison  in  a  fort.  That  is, 
they  are  valiant,  consistent,  reliable  in  an 
obvious  public  sense;  but  their  curse  is  that 
they  can  only  tread  the  flagstones  of  the  court- 
yard or  the  cold   rock  of  the   ramparts;  they 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


have    never   so    much    as    set   their   foot   upon 
their  native  soil. 

We  have  considered  Bernard  Shaw  as  an 
Irishman.  The  next  step  is  to  consider  him 
as  an  exile  from  Ireland  living  in  Ireland; 
that,  some  people  would  say,  is  a  paradox 
after  his  own  heart.  But,  indeed,  such  a 
complication  is  not  really  difficult  to  expound. 
The  great  religion  and  the  great  national 
tradition  which  have  persisted  for  so  many 
centuries  in  Ireland  have  encouraged  these 
clean  and  cutting  elements;  but  they  have 
encouraged  many  other  things  which  serve  to 
balance  them.  The  Irish  peasant  has  these 
qualities  which  are  somewhat  peculiar  to  Ire- 
landy,  a  strange  purity  and  a  strange  pugnacity ^^ 
But  the  Irish  peasant  also  has  qualities  which 
are  common  to  all  peasants,  and  his  nation 
has  qualities  that  are  common  to  all  healthy 
nations.     I  mean  chiefly  the  things  that  most 

(of  us  absorb  in  childhood;  especially  the  sense 
of  the  supernatural  and  the  sense  of  the 
natural;  the  love  of  the  sky  with  its  infinity 
of  vision,  and  the  love  of  the  soil  with  its 
strict  hedges  and  solid  shapes  of  ownershipJ 
But    here    comes    the    paradox    of   Shaw;    the 

^  greatest  of  all  his  paradoxes  and  the  one  of 
which  he  is  unconscious.      These  one  or   two 

36 


The  Puritan 


plain  truths  which   quite   stupid   people   learn 
at  the   beginning   are  exactly  the  one  or  two 
truths    which    Bernard    Shaw    may    not    learn 
even  at  the  end.     He  is  a  daring  pilgrim  who  ^ 
has  set  out  from  the  grave  to  find  the  cradle.    1 
He  started  from  points  of  view  which  no  one 
else  was  clever  enough  to  discover,  and  he  is 
at   last    discovering   points   of  view  which   no 
one    else    was    ever   stupid    enough    to    ignore. 
This   absence   of  the   red-hot  truisms   of  boy- 
hood; this   sense  that  he  is  not  rooted  in  the 
ancient   sagacities   of  infancy,   has,   I   think,   a 
great  deal  to  do  with  his  position  as  a  member 
of  an  alien  minority  in  Ireland.     He  who  has 
no  real  country  can  have  no  real  home.     The 
average    autochthonous    Irishman    is    close    to 
patriotism    because   he   is    close   to   the   earth; 
he  is  close  to  domesticity  because  he  is  close 
to  the  earth;  he  is  close  to  doctrinal  theology 
and  elaborate  ritual  because  he  is  close  to  the 
earth,    i  In    short,   he   is   close   to   the   heavens 
because  he  is  close  to  the  earth.  '  But  we  must 
not  expect  any  of  these  elemental  and  collective 
virtues  in  the  man  of  the  garrison.     He  can- 
not   be    expected    to   exhibit   the   virtues    of  a 
people,   but  only   (as   Ibsen  would   say)   of  an 
enemy  of  the  people.     Mr.  Shaw  has  no  living 
traditions,  no  schoolboy  tricks,  no  college  cus- 

Z7 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


toms,  to  link  him  with  other  men.  Nothing 
about  him  can  be  supposed  to  refer  to  a 
family  feud  or  to  a  family  joke.  He  does  not 
drink  toasts;  he  does  not  keep  anniversaries; 
musical  as  he  is  I  doubt  if  he  would  consent 
to  sing.  All  this  has  something  in  it  of  a 
tree  with  its  roots  in  the  air.  The  best  way 
to  shorten  winter  is  to  prolong  Christmas; 
and  the  only  way  to  enjoy  the  sun  of  April  is 
to  be  an  April  Fool.  When  people  asked 
Bernard  Shaw  to  attend  the  Stratford  Ter- 
centenary, he  wrote  back  with  characteristic 
contempt:  "I  do  not  keep  my  own  birthday, 
and  I  cannot  see  why  I  should  keep  Shake- 
speare's." I  think  that  if  Mr.  Shaw  had 
always  kept  his  own  birthday  he  would  be 
better  able  to  understand  Shakespeare's  birth- 
day— and  Shakespeare's  poetry. 

In  conjecturally  referring  this  negative  side 
of  the  man,  his  lack  of  the  smaller  charities  of 
our  common  childhood,  to  his  birth  in  the 
dominant  Irish  sect,  I  do  not  write  without 
historic  memory  or  reference  to  other  cases. 
That  minority  of  Protestant  exiles  which 
mainly  represented  Ireland  to  England  during 
the  eighteenth  century  did  contain  some  speci- 
mens of  the  Irish  lounger  and  even  of  the 
Irish    blackguard;    Sheridan    and    even    Gold- 

38 


The  Puritan 


smith   suggest  the   type.      Even   in   their  irre- 
sponsibility these  figures  had  a  touch  of  Irish 
tartness   and   realism;   but  the   type   has    been 
too    much    insisted    on    to    the    exclusion    of 
others    equally    national    and    interesting.      To 
one  of  these  it  is  worth  while  to  draw  atten- 
tion.    At  intervals   during  the  eighteenth   and 
nineteenth     centuries    there    has     appeared    a  "^ 
peculiar  kind   of  Irishman.      He   is    so   unlike 
the  English  image  of  Ireland  that  the  English 
have  actually  fallen  back  on  the  pretence  that 
he   was   not   Irish   at   all.      The   type   is    com-  k 
monly    Protestant;    and    sometimes    seems    to 
be  almost  anti-national  in  its  acrid  instinct  for 
judging   itself.      Its    nationalism    only    appears 
when   it   flings   itself  with  even  bitterer  pleas- 
ure into   judging   the  foreigner  or  the  invader. 
The    first    and    greatest    of    such    figures    was  ^ 
Swift.      Thackeray    simply    denied    that    Swift 
was  an  Irishman,  because  he  was  not  a  stage 
Irishman.       He     was     not     (in     the     English 
novelist's     opinion)     winning     and     agreeable 
enough  to  be  Irish.     The  truth  is  that  Swiftj 
was   much   too   harsh   and   disagreeable   to   bei 
English.     There  is   a  great  deal  of  Jonathan 
Swift  in   Bernard   Shaw.     Shaw  is  like  Swift, 
for   instance,   in   combining  extravagant  fancy  ^ 
with    a   curious    sort   of  coldness.      But   he   is 

39 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


most  like  Swift  In  that  very  quality  which 
Thackeray  said  was  impossible  in  an  Irish- 
man, benevolent  bullying,  a  pity  touched  with 
contempt,  and  a  habit  of  knocking  men  down 
I  for  their  own  good.  Characters  in  novels  are 
often  described  as  so  amiable  that  they  hate 
to  be  thanked.  It  Is  not  an  amiable  quality, 
and  It  Is  an  extremely  rare  one;  but  Swift 
possessed  it.  When  Swift  was  burled  the 
Dublin  poor  came  In  crowds  and  wept  by 
the  grave  of  the  broadest  and  most  free- 
handed of  their  benefactors.  Swift  deserved 
the  public  tribute;  but  he  might  have  writhed 
and  kicked  in  his  grave  at  the  thought  of 
receiving  It.  ( There  Is  In  G.  B.  S.  some- 
thing of  the  same  inhumane  humanity.  Irish 
history  has  offered  a  third  Instance  of  this 
particular  type  of  educated  and  Protestant 
Irishman,  sincere,  unsympathetic,  aggressive, 
alone.  I  mean  Parnell;  and  with  him  also 
a  bewildered  England  tried  the  desperate 
dodge  of  saying  that  he  was  not  Irish  at  all. 
As  If  any  thinkable  sensible  snobbish  law- 
abiding  Englishman  would  ever  have  defied 
all  the  drawing-rooms  by  disdaining  the 
House  of  Commons!  ;  Despite  the  differ- 
ence between  taciturnity  and  a  torrent  of 
fluency   there    Is    much    in    common    also    be- 

40 


The  Puritan 


tween  Shaw  and  Parnell;  something  in  com- 
mon even  in  the  figures  of  the  two  men, 
in  the  bony  bearded  faces  with  their  almost  ^ 
Satanic  self-possession.  It  will  not  do  to 
pretend  that  none  of  these  three  men  belong 
to  their  own  nation;  but  it  is  true  that  they 
belonged  to  one  special,  though  recurring, 
type  of  that  nation.  And  they  all  three  have 
this  peculiar  mark,  that  w^hile  Nationalists  in 
their  various  ways  they  all  give  to  the  more 
genial  English  one  common  impression;  I 
mean  the  impression  that  they  do  not  so  b 
much  love  Ireland  as  hate  England.  ' 

I  will  not  dogmatise  upon  the  difficult  ques- 
tion as  to  w^hether  there  is  any  religious  sig- 
nificance in  the  fact  that  these  three  rather 
ruthless  Irishmen  were  Protestant  Irishmen.  ^I 
incline  to  think  myself  that  the  Catholic  Church 
has  added  charity  and  gentleness  to  the  virtues 
of  a  people  which  w^ould  otherwise  have  been 
too  keen  and  contemptuous,  too  aristocratic. 
But  however  this  may  be,  there  can  surely  be 
no  question  that  Bernard  Shaw's  Protestant 
education  in  a  Catholic  country  has  made  a 
great  deal  of  difference  to  his  mind.  It  has 
affected  it  in  two  ways,  the  first  negative  and 
the  second  positive.  It  has  affected  him  by 
cutting   him   off   (as   we   have   said)    from   the 

41 


George  Bernard  Share 


fields  and  fountains  of  his  real  home  and  his- 
tory; by  making  him  an  Orangeman.  And 
it  has  affected  him  by  the  particular  colour  of 
the  particular  religion  which  he  received;  by 
making  him  a  Puritan. 

In  one  of  his  numerous  prefaces  he  says, 
"I  have  always  been  on  the  side  of  the 
Puritans  in  the  matter  of  Art";  and  a  closer 
study  will,  I  think,  reveal  that  he  is  on  the 
side  of  the  Puritans  in  almost  everything. 
Puritanism  was  not  a  mere  code  of  cruel 
regulations,  though  some  of  Its  regulations 
were  more  cruel  than  any  that  have  disgraced 
Europe.  Nor  was  Puritanism  a  mere  night- 
mare, an  evil  shadow  of  eastern  gloom  and 
fatalism,  though  this  element  did  enter  it,  and 
was  as  it  were  the  symptom  and  punishment 
of  its  essential  error.  Something  much  nobler 
(even  if  almost  equally  mistaken)  was  the 
original  energy  in  the  Puritan  creed.  And  it 
must  be  defined  with  a  little  more  delicacy  if 
we  are  really  to  understand  the  attitude  of 
G.  B.  S.,  who  Is  the  greatest  of  the  modern 
Puritans  and  perhaps  the  last. 

I  should  roughly  define  the  first  spirit  in 
Puritanism  thus.  It  was  a  refusal  to  contem- 
plate God  or  goodness  with  anything  lighter 
or  milder  than  the  most  fierce  concentration 

42 


The  Puritan 


of  the  intellect.  A  Puritan  meant  originally 
a  man  whose  mind  had  no  holidays.  ^  To  use 
his  own  favourite  phrase,  he  would  let  no 
living  thing  come  between  him  and  his  God; 
an  attitude  which  involved  eternal  torture  for  \ 
him  and  a  cruel  contempt  for  all  the  living 
things.  It  was  better  to  worship  in  a  barn 
than  in  a  cathedral  for  the  specific  and  specified 
reason  that  the  cathedral  was  beautiful.  Physi- 
cal beauty  was  a  false  and  sensual  symbol 
coming  in  between  the  intellect  and  the  object 
of  its  intellectual  worship.  The  human  brain 
ought  to  be  at  every  instant  a  consuming  fire 
which  burns  through  all  conventional  images 
until  they  were  as  transparent  as  glass. 

This  is  the  essential  Puritan  idea,  that  God 
can  only  be  praised  by  direct  contemplation'. 
of  Him.  You  must  praise  God  only  with 
your  brain;  it  is  wicked  to  praise  Him  with 
your  passions  or  your  physical  habits  or  your 
gesture  or  instinct  of  beauty.  Therefore  it 
is  wicked  to  worship  by  singing  or  dancing  or 
drinking  sacramental  wines  or  building  beauti- 
ful churches  or  saying  prayers  when  you  are 
half  asleep.  We  must  not  worship  by  dancing, 
drinking,  building  or  singing;  we  can  only  ' 
worship  by  thinking.  Our  heads  can  praise 
God,    but   never   our   hands    and    feet.      That 

43 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


is  the  true  and  original  impulse  of  the  Puritans. 
There  is  a  great  deal  to  be  said  for  it,  and 
a  great  deal  was  said  for  it  in  Great  Britain 
steadily  for  two  hundred  years.  It  has 
gradually  decayed  in  England  and  Scotland, 
not  because  of  the  advance  of  modern  thought 
(which  means  nothing),  but  because  of  the 
slow  revival  of  the  mediaeval  energy  and 
character  in  the  two  peoples.  The  English 
were  always  hearty  and  humane,  and  they 
have  made  up  their  minds  to  be  hearty  and 
humane  in  spite  of  the  Puritans.  -  The  result 
is  that  Dickens  and  W.  W.  Jacobs  have 
picked  up  the  tradition  of  Chaucer  and  Robin 
Hood.  .  The  Scotch  were  always  romantic,  and 
they  have  made  up  their  minds  to  be  romantic 
in  spite  of  the  Puritans.  The  result  is  that 
Scott  and  Stevenson  have  picked  up  the  tradi- 
tion of  Bruce,  Blind  Harry  and  the  vagabond 
Scottish  kings.  England  has  become  English 
again;  Scotland  has  become  Scottish  again,  in 
spite  of  the  splendid  incubus,  the  noble  night- 
mare of  Calvin.  There  is  only  one  place  in 
the  British  Islands  where  one  may  naturally 
expect  to  find  still  surviving  in  its  fulness  the 
fierce  detachment  of  the  true  Puritan.  That 
ace  is  the  Protestant  part  of  Ireland.  The 
Orange    Calvinists    can    be    disturbed    by    no 

44 


Ipi 


The  Puritan 


national  resurrection,  for  they  have  no  nation. 
In  them,  if  in  any  people,  will  be  found  the 
rectangular  consistency  of  the  Calvinist.  The 
Irish  Protestant  rioters  are  at  least  immeasur- 
ably finer  fellows  than  any  of  their  brethren 
in  England.  They  have  the  two  enormous 
superiorities:  first,  that  the  Irish  Protestant 
rioters  really  believe  in  Protestant  theology; 
and  second,  that  the  Irish  Protestant  rioters 
do  really  riot.  Among  these  people,  if  any- 
where, should  be  found  the  cult  of  theological 
clarity  combined  with  barbarous  external 
simplicity.  Among  these  people  Bernard  Shaw 
was  born. 

There  is  at  least  one  outstanding  fact  about 
the  man  we  are  studying;  Bernard  Shaw  is 
never  frivolous.  He  never  gives  his  opinions 
a  holiday;  he  is  never  irresponsible  even  for 
an  instant.  He  has  no  nonsensical  second 
self  which  he  can  get  into  as  one  gets  into  a 
dressing-gown;  that  ridiculous  disguise  which 
is  yet  more  real  than  the  real  person.  That 
collapse  and  humorous  confession  of  futility 
was  much  of  the  force  in  Charles  Lamb  and  in 
Stevenson.  There  is  nothing  of  this  in  Shaw; 
his  wit  is  never  a  weakness;  therefore  it  is 
never  a  sense  of  humour.  For  wit  is  always 
connected  with  the  idea  that  truth  is  close  and 

45 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


clear.  Humour,  on  the  other  hand,  is  always 
connected  with  the  idea  that  truth  is  tricky 
and  mystical  and  easily  mistaken.  What 
Charles  Lamb  said  of  the  Scotchman  is  far 
truer  of  this  type  of  Puritan  Irishman;  he 
does  not  see  things  suddenly  in  a  new  light; 
all  his  brilliancy  is  a  blindingly  rapid  calcula- 
tion and  deduction.  Bernard  Shaw  never  said 
an  indefensible  thing;  that  is,  he  never  said  a 
thing  that  he  was  not  prepared  brilliantly  to 
defend.  He  never  breaks  out  into  that  cry 
beyond  reason  and  conviction,  that  cry  of 
Lamb  when  he  cried,  "We  would  indict  our 
dreams!"  or  of  Stevenson,  "Shall  we  never 
shed  blood  .^''  In  short  he  is  not  a  humorist, 
-^  but  a  great  wit,  almost  as  great  as  Voltaire. 
Humour  is  akin  to  agnosticism,  which  is  only 
the  negative  side  of  mysticism.  But  pure 
wit  is  akin  to  Puritanism;  to  the  perfect  and 
painful  consciousness  of  the  final  fact  in  the 
universe.  ..Very  briefly,- the  man  who  sees  the 
consistency  in  things  is  a  wit — and  a  Calvinist. 
The  man  who  sees  the  inconsistency  in  things 
is  a  humorist — and  a  Catholic.)  However 
this  may  be,  Bernard  Shaw  exhibits  all  that  is 
purest  in  the  Puritan;  the  desire  to  see  truth 
face  to  face  even  if  it  slay  us,  the  high  im- 
patience with  irrelevant  sentiment  or  obstruc- 

46 


The  Puritan 


tive   symbol;   the   constant   effort   to   keep   the 
soul   at  its   highest   pressure   and   speed.      His 
instincts    upon    all    social    customs    and    ques- 
tions   are    Puritan.      His    favourite    author    is  X, 
Bunyan. 

But  along  with  what  was  inspiring  and  direct 
in  Puritanism  Bernard  Shaw  has  inherited  also 
some  of  the  things  that  were  cumbersome  and 
traditional.  If  ever  Shaw  exhibits  a  prejudice 
it  is  always  a  Puritan  prejudice.  For  Puritan- 
ism has  not  been  able  to  sustain  through  three 
centuries  that  native  ecstacy  of  the  direct  con- 
templation of  truth;  indeed  it  was  the  whole 
mistake  of  Puritanism  to  imagine  for  a  moment 
that  it  could.  One  cannot  be  serious  for  three  .^ 
hundred  years.  In  institutions  built  so  as  to  * 
endure  for  ages  you  must  have  relaxation, 
symboHc  relativity  and  healthy  routine.  In 
eternal  temples  you  must  have  frivolity.  You 
must  "be  at  ease  in  Zion"  unless  you  are  only 
paying  it  a  flying  visit. 

By  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century 
this  old  austerity  and  actuality  in  the  Puritan 
vision  had  fallen  away  into  two  principal  lower 
forms.  The  first  is  a  sort  of  idealistic  gar- 
rulity upon  which  Bernard  Shaw  has  made 
fierce  and  on  the  whole  fruitful  war.  Per- 
petual talk  about  righteousness  and  unselfish- 

47 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


ness,  about  things  that  should  elevate  and 
things  which  cannot  but  degrade,  about  social 
purity  and  true  Christian  manhood,  all  poured 
out  with  fatal  fluency  and  with  very  little 
reference  to  the  real  facts  of  anybody's  soul  or 
salary — into  this  weak  and  lukewarm  torrent 
has  melted  down  much  of  that  mountainous 
ice  which  sparkled  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
bleak  indeed,  but  blazing.  The  hardest  thing 
of  the  seventeenth  century  bids  fair  to  be  the 
softest  thing  of  the  twentieth. 

Of  all  this  sentimental  and  deliquescent 
Puritanism  Bernard  Shaw  has  always  been  the 
antagonist;  and  the  only  respect  in  which  it  has 
soiled  him  was  that  he  believed  for  only  too 
long  that  such  sloppy  idealism  was  the  whole 
idealism  of  Christendom  and  so  used  "ideal- 
ist" itself  as  a  term  of  reproach.  But  there 
were  other  and  negative  effects  of  Puritanism 
which  he  did  not  escape  so  completely.  I 
cannot  think  that  he  has  wholly  escaped  that 
element  in  Puritanism  which  may  fairly  bear 
the  title  of  the  taboo.  For  it  is  a  singular 
fact  that  although  extreme  Protestantism  is 
dying  in  elaborate  and  over-refined  civilisa- 
tion, yet  it  is  the  barbaric  patches  of  it  that  live 
longest  and  die  last.  Of  the  creed  of  John 
Knox  the   modern   Protestant  has   abandoned 


48 


The  Puritan 


the  civilised  part  and  retained  only  the  savage 
part.  He  has  given  up  that  great  and  sys- 
tematic philosophy  of  Calvinism  which  had 
much  in  common  with  modern  science  and 
strongly  resembles  ordinar}^  and  recurrent  de- 
terminisim.  But  he  has  retained  the  accidental 
veto  upon  cards  or  comic  plays,  which  Knox 
only  valued  as  mere  proof  of  his  people's 
concentration  on  their  theolog-y.  All  the  awful 
but  sublime  affirmations  of  Puritan  theology 
are  gone.  Only  savage  negations  remain  y 
such  as  that  by  which  in  Scotland  on  eveiyj 
seventh  day  the  creed  of  fear  lays  his  finger 
on    all   hearts    and    makes    an    evil    silence    ini 

i 

the  streets. 

By  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century 
when  Shaw  was  born  this  dim  and  barbaric 
element  in  Puritanism,  being  all  that  remained 
of  it,  had  added  another  taboo  to  its  philosophy 
of  taboos;  there  had  grown  up  a  mystical 
horror  of  those  fermented  drinks  which  are 
part  of  the  food  of  civilised  mankind.  Doubt- 
less many  persons  take  an  extreme  line  on  this 
matter  solely  because  of  some  calculation  of 
social  harm;  many,  but  not  all  and  not  even 
most.  Many  people  think  that  paper  money 
is  a  mistake  and  does  much  harm.  But  they 
do   not   shudder   or   snigger   when   they   see   a 

D  49 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


cheque-book.  They  do  not  whisper  with 
unsavoury  slyness  that  such  and  such  a  man 
was  "seen''  going  into  a  bank.  I  am  quite 
convinced  that  the  English  aristocracy  is  the 
curse  of  England,  but  I  have  not  noticed  either 
in  myself  or  others  any  disposition  to  ostracise 
a  man  simply  for  accepting  a  peerage,  as  the 
modern  Puritans  would  certainly  ostracise  him 
(from  any  of  their  positions  of  trust)  for 
accepting  a  drink.  The  sentiment  is  certainly 
very  largely  a  mystical  one,  like  the  sentiment 
about  the  seventh  day.  Like  the  Sabbath,  it 
is  defended  with  sociological  reasons;  but 
those  reasons  can  be  simply  and  sharply  tested. 
If  a  Puritan  tells  you  that  all  humanity  should 
rest  once  a  week,  you  have  only  to  propose 
that  they  should  rest  on  Wednesday.  And  if 
a  Puritan  tells  you  that  he  does  not  object  to 
beer  but  to  the  tragedies  of  excess  in  beer, 
simply  propose  to  him  that  in  prisons  and 
workhouses  (where  the  amount  can  be  abso- 
lutely regulated)  the  inmates  should  have 
three  glasses  of  beer  a  day.  The  Puritan 
cannot  call  that  excess;  but  he  will  find  some- 
thing to  call  it.  For  it  is  not  the  excess  he 
objects  to,  but  the  beer.  It  is  a  transcendental 
taboo,  and  it  is  one  of  the  two  or  three 
positive    and    painful    prejudices    with    which 

50 


The  Puritan 


Bernard  Shaw  began.  A  similar  severity  of 
outlook  ran  through  all  his  earlier  attitude 
towards  the  drama;  especially  towards  the 
lighter  or  looser  drama.  His  Puritan  teachers  1 
could  not  prevent  him  from  taking  up  theatri-  { 
cals,  but  they  made  him  take  theatricals  | 
seriously.  All  his  plays  were  indeed  "plays 
for  Puritans."  All  his  criticisms  quiver  with 
a  refined  and  almost  tortured  contempt  for  the 
indulgencies  of  ballet  and  burlesque,  for  the 
tights  and  the  double  entente.  He  can  endure 
lawlessness  but  not  levity.  He  is  not  repelled  i 
by  the  divorces  and  the  adulteries  as  he  is  by 
the  "splits."  And  he  has  always  been  fore- 
most among  the  fierce  modern  critics  who  ask 
indignantly,  "Why  do  you  object  to  a  thing 
full  of  sincere  philosophy  like  The  Wild  Duck 
while  you  tolerate  a  mere  dirty  joke  like  The 
Spring  Chicken?''  I  do  not  think  he  has  ever 
understood  what  seems  to  me  the  very  sensible 
answer  of  the  man  In  the  street,  "I  laugh  at 
the  dirty  joke  of  The  Spring  Chicken  because  it 
is  a  joke.  I  criticise  the  philosophy  of  The 
Wild  Duck  because  it  Is  a  philosophy." 

Shaw  does  not  do  justice  to  the  democratic 
ease  and  sanity  on  this  subject;  but  indeed, 
whatever  else  he  Is,  he  Is  not  democratic.  As 
an  Irishman  he  Is  an  aristocrat,  as  a  Calvinlst 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


he  Is  a  soul  apart;  he  drew  the  breath  of  his 
nostrils  from  a  land  of  fallen  principalities  and 
proud  gentility,  and  the  breath  of  his  spirit 
from  a  creed  which  made  a  wall  of  crystal 
around  the  elect.  The  two  forces  between 
them  produced  this  potent  and  slender  figure, 
swift,  scornful,  dainty  and  full  of  dry  mag- 
nanimity; and  it  only  needed  the  last  touch 
of  oligarchic  mastery  to  be  given  by  the  over- 
whelming oligarchic  atmosphere  of  our  present 
age.  Such  was  the  Puritan  Irishman  who 
stepped  out  into  the  world.  Into  what  kind 
of  world  did  he  step  ? 


5* 


The  Progressive 


IT  Is  now  partly  possible  to  Justify  the 
Shavian  method  of  putting  the  explana- 
tions before  the  events.  I  can  now  give 
a  fact  or  two  with  a  partial  certainty  at 
least  that  the  reader  will  give  to  the  affairs  of 
Bernard  Shaw  something  of  the  same  kind 
of  significance  which  they  have  for  Bernard 
Shaw  himself.  Thus,  if  I  had  simply  said  that 
Shaw  was  born  in  Dublin  the  average  reader 
might  exclaim,  "Ah  yes — a  wild  Irishman, 
gay,  emotional  and  untrustworthy."  The 
wrong  note  would  be  struck  at  the  start. 
I  have  attempted  to  give  some  idea  of  what 
being  born  in  Ireland  meant  to  the  man  who 
was  really  born  there.  Now  therefore  for  the 
first  time  I  may  be  permitted  to  confess  that 
Bernard  Shaw  was,  like  other  men,  born.  He 
was  born  in  Dublin  on  the  26th  of  July,  1856. 
Just  as  his  birth  can  only  be  appreciated 
through  some  vision  of  Ireland,  so  his  family 
can  only  be  appreciated  by  some  reaHsation  of 
the  Puritan.  He  was  the  youngest  son  of  one 
George  Carr  Shaw,  who  had  been  a  civil  servant 
and  was  afterwards  a   somewhat  unsuccessful 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


business  man.  If  I  had  merely  said  that  his 
family  was  Protestant  (which  in  Ireland  means 
Puritan)  it  might  have  been  passed  over  as  a 
quite  colourless  detail.  But  if  the  reader  will 
keep  in  mind  w4iat  has  been  said  about  the 
degeneration  of  Calvinism  into  a  few  clumsy 
vetoes,  he  will  see  in  its  full  and  frightful  sig- 
nificance such  a  sentence  as  this  which  comes 
from  Shaw  himself:  "My  father  was  in  theory 
a  vehement  teetotaler,  but  in  practice  often  a 
furtive  drinker."  The  two  things  of  course 
rest  upon  exactly  the  same  philosophy;  the 
philosophy  of  the  taboo.  There  is  a  mystical 
substance,  and  it  can  give  monstrous  pleasures 
or  call  down  monstrous  punishments.  The 
dipsomaniac  and  the  abstainer  are  not  only  both 
mistaken,  but  they  both  make  the  same  mistake. 
They  both  regard  wine  as  a  drug  and  not  as  a 
drink.  But  if  I  had  mentioned  that  fragment  of 
family  information  vvithout  any  ethical  preface, 
people  would  have  begun  at  once  to  talk  non- 
sense about  artistic  heredity  and  Celtic  weak- 
ness, and  would  have  gained  the  general 
impression  that  Bernard  Shaw  was  an  Irish 
wastrel  and  the  child  of  Irish  wastrels. 
Whereas  It  is  the  whole  point  of  the  matter 
that  Bernard  Shaw  comes  of  a  Puritan  middle- 
class   family  of  the   most   solid   respectability; 

54 


The  Progressive 


and  the  only  admission  of  error  arises  from 
the  fact  that  one  member  of  that  Puritan 
family  took  a  particularly  Puritan  view  of 
strong  drink.  That  is,  he  regarded  it  generally 
as  a  poison  and  sometimes  as  a  medicine,  if 
only  a  mental  medicine.  But  a  poison  and  a 
medicine  are  very  closely  akin,  as  the  nearest 
chemist  knows;  and  they  are  chiefly  akin  in 
this;  that  no  one  will  drink  either  of  them 
for  fun.  Moreover,  medicine  and  a  poison  are 
also  alike  in  this;  that  no  one  will  by  preference 
drink  either  of  them  in  public.  And  this 
medical  or  poisonous  view  of  alcohol  is  not 
confined  to  the  one  Puritan  to  whose  failure 
I  have  referred,  it  is  spread  all  over  the  whole 
of  our  dying  Puritan  civilisation.  For  instance, 
social  reformers  have  fired  a  hundred  shots 
against  the  public-house;  but  never  one 
against  its  really  shameful  feature.  The  sign 
of  decay  is  not  in  the  public-house,  but  In  the 
private  bar;  or  rather  the  row  of  five  or  six 
private  bars,  into  each  of  which  a  respectable 
dipsomaniac  can  go  in  solitude,  and  by  indulg- 
ing  his  own  half-witted  sin  violate  his  own 
half-witted  morality.  Nearly  all  these  places 
are  equipped  with  an  atrocious  apparatus  of 
ground-glass  windows  which  can  be  so  closed 
that  they  practically  conceal  the  face  of  the 

SS 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


buyer  from  the  seller.  Words  cannot  express 
the  abysses  of  human  infamy  and  hateful 
shame  expressed  by  that  elaborate  piece  of 
furniture.  Whenever  I  go  into  a  public-house, 
which  happens  fairly  often,  I  always  carefully 
open  all  these  apertures  and  then  leave  the  place, 
in  every  way  refreshed. 

In  other  ways  also  It  is  necessary  to  insist 
not  only  on  the  fact  of  an  extreme  Protestant- 
ism, but  on  that  of  the  Protestantism  of  a 
garrison;  a  world  where  that  religious  force 
both  grew  and  festered  all  the  more  for 
being  at  once  isolated  and  protected.  All  the 
influences  surrounding  Bernard  Shaw  in  boy- 
hood were  not  only  Puritan,  but  such  that 
no  non-Puritan  force  could  possibly  pierce  or 
counteract.  He  belonged  to  that  Irish  group 
which,  according  to  Catholicism,  has  hardened 
its  heart,  which,  according  to  Protestantism 
has  hardened  its  head,  but  which,  as  I  fancy, 
has  chiefly  hardened  its  hide,  lost  its  sensibility 
to  the  contact  of  the  things  around  it.  In 
reading  about  his  youth,  one  forgets  that  it 
was  passed  in  the  island  which  is  still  one 
flame  before  the  altar  of  St.  Peter  and  St. 
Patrick.  The  whole  thing  might  be  happening 
in  Wimbledon.  He  went  to  the  Wesleyan 
Connexional  School.     He  went  to  hear  Moody 

56 


The  Progressive 


and  Sankey.  "I  was,"  he  writes,  "wholly 
unmoved  by  their  eloquence;  and  felt  bound 
to  inform  the  public  that  I  was,  on  the  whole, 
an  atheist.  My  letter  was  solemnly  printed 
in  Public  Opinion^  to  the  extreme  horror  of 
my  numerous  aunts  and  uncles."  That  is 
the  philosophical  atmosphere;  those  are  the 
religious  postulates.  It  could  never  cross 
the  mind  of  a  man  of  the  Garrison  that  before 
becoming  an  atheist  he  might  stroll  into  one 
of  the  churches  of  his  own  country,  and  learn 
something  of  the  philosophy  that  had  satisfied 
Dante  and  Bossuet,  Pascal  and  Descartes. 

In  the  same  way  I  have  to  appeal  to  my  theo- 
retic preface  at  this  third  point  of  the  drama  of 
Shaw's  career.  On  leaving  school  he  stepped 
into  a  secure  business  position  which  he  held 
steadily  for  four  years  and  which  he  flung 
away  almost  in  one  day.  He  rushed  even 
recklessly  to  London;  where  he  was  quite 
unsuccessful  and  practically  starved  for  six 
years.  If  I  had  mentioned  this  act  on  the  first 
page  of  this  book  it  would  have  seemed  to  have 
either  the  simplicity  of  a  mere  fanatic  or 
else  to  cover  some  ugly  escapade  of  youth  or 
some  quite  criminal  looseness  of  temperament. 
But  Bernard  Shaw  did  not  act  thus  because  he 
was   careless,   but  because  he  was  ferociously 

S7 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


careful,  careful  especially  of  the  one  thing 
needful.  What  was  he  thinking  about  when 
he  threw  away  his  last  halfpence  and  went  to 
a  strange  place;  what  was  he  thinking  about 
when  he  endured  hunger  and  small-pox  in 
London  almost  without  hope  ?  He  was  think- 
ing of  what  he  has  ever  since  thought  of,  the 
slow  but  sure  surge  of  the  social  revolution; 
you  must  read  into  all  those  bald  sentences 
and  empty  years  what  I  shall  attempt  to 
,  sketch  in  the  third  section.  You  must  read 
/  the  revolutionary  movement  of  the  later  nine- 
teenth century,  darkened  indeed  by  materialism 
and  made  mutable  by  fear  and  free  thought, 
but  full  of  awful  vistas  of  an  escape  from  the 
curse  of  Adam. 

Bernard  Shaw  happened  to  be  born  in  an 
epoch,  or  rather  at  the  end  of  an  epoch,  which 
was  in  its  way  unique  in  the  ages  of  history. 
The  nineteenth  century  was  not  unique  in  the 
success  or  rapidity  of  its  reforms  or  in  their 
ultimate  cessation;  but  it  was  unique  in  the 
peculiar  character  of  the  failure  which  followed 
the  success.  The  French  Revolution  was  an 
enormous  act  of  human  realisation;  it  has 
altered  the  terms  of  every  law  and  the  shape 
of  every  town  in  Europe;  but  it  was  by  no 
means  the  only  example  of  a  strong  and  swift 

58 


The  Progressive 


period  of  reform.  What  was  really  peculiar 
about  the  Republican  energy  was  this,  that  It 
left  behind  It,  not  an  ordinary  reaction  but  a 
kind  of  dreary,  drawn  out  and  utterly  un- 
meaning hope.  The  strong  and  evident  Idea 
of  reform  sank  lower  and  lower  until  it  became 
the  timid  and  feeble  Idea  of  progress.  Towards 
the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  there  appeared 
its  two  incredible  figures;  they  were  the  pure 
Conservative  and  the  pure  Progressive;  two 
figures  which  would  have  been  overwhelmed 
with  laughter  by  any  other  intellectual  common- 
wealth of  history.  There  was  hardly  a  human 
generation  which  could  not  have  seen  the  folly 
of  merely  going  fon,vard  or  merely  standing 
still;  of  mere  progressing  or  mere  conserving. 
In  the  coarsest  Greek  Comedy  we  might  have 
a  joke  about  a  man  who  wanted  to  keep  what 
he  had,  whether  it  w^as  yellow  gold  or  yellow 
fever.  In  the  dullest  mediaeval  morality  we 
might  have  a  joke  about  a  progressive  gentle- 
man who,  having  passed  heaven  and  come 
to  purgatory,  decided  to  go  further  and  fare 
worse.  The  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries 
were  an  age  of  quite  Impetuous  progress;  men 
made  in  one  rush,  roads,  trades,  synthetic  phi- 
losophies, parliaments,  university  settlements, 
a   law  that   could   cover  the   world   and   such 

59 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


spires  as  had  never  struck  the  sky.  But  they 
would  not  have  said  that  they  wanted  progress, 
but  that  they  wanted  the  road,  the  parliaments, 
and  the  spires.  In  the  same  way  the  time 
from  Richelieu  to  the  Revolution  was  upon  the 
whole  a  time  of  conservation,  often  of  harsh 
and  hideous  conservation;  it  preserved  tor- 
tures, legal  quibbles,  and  despotism.  But  if  you 
had  asked  the  rulers  they  would  not  have  said 
that  they  wanted  conservation;  but  that  they 
wanted  the  torture  and  the  despotism.  The 
old  reformers  and  the  old  despots  alike  desired 
definite  things,  powers,  licenses,  payments, 
vetoes,  and  permissions.  Only  the  modern 
progressive  and  the  modern  conservative  have 
been  content  with  two  words. 

Other  periods  of  active  improvement  have 
died  by  stiffening  at  last  into  some  routine. 
Thus  the  Gothic  gaiety  of  the  thirteenth 
century  stiffening  into  the  mere  Gothic  ugli- 
ness of  the  fifteenth.  Thus  the  mighty  wave 
of  the  Renaissance,  whose  crest  was  lifted  to 
heaven,  was  touched  by  a  wintry  witchery  of 
classicism  and  frozen  for  ever  before  it  fell. 
Alone  of  all  such  movements  the  democratic 
movement  of  the  last  two  centuries  has  not 
frozen,  but  loosened  and  liquefied.  Instead  of 
becoming  more  pedantic  in  its  old  age,  it  has 

60 


The  Progressive 


grown  more  bewildered.  By  the  analogy  of 
healthy  history  we  ought  to  have  gone  on 
worshipping  the  republic  and  calling  each  other 
citizen  with  increasing  seriousness  until  some 
other  part  of  the  truth  broke  into  our  repub- 
lican temple.  But  in  fact  we  have  turned  the 
freedom  of  democracy  into  a  mere  scepticism, 
destructive  of  everything,  including  democracy 
itself.  It  is  none  the  less  destructive  because 
it  is,  so  to  speak,  an  optimistic  scepticism — 
or,  as  I  have  said,  a  dreary  hope.  It  was  none 
the  better  because  the  destroyers  were  always 
talking  about  the  new  vistas  and  enlighten- 
ments which  their  new  negations  opened  to  us. 
The  republican  temple,  like  any  other  strong 
building,  rested  on  certain  definite  limits  and 
supports.  But  the  modern  man  inside  it  went 
on  indefinitely  knocking  holes  in  his  own  house 
and  saying  that  they  were  windows.  The 
result  is  not  hard  to  calculate:  the  moral 
world  was  pretty  well  all  windows  and  no 
house  by  the  time  that  Bernard  Shaw  arrived 
on  the  scene. 

Then  there  entered  into  full  swing  that 
great  game  of  which  he  soon  became  the 
greatest  master.  A  progressive  or  advanced 
person  was  now  to  mean  not  a  man  who  wanted 
democracy,  but  a  man  who  wanted  something 

6i 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


newer  than  democracy.  A  reformer  was  to  be, 
not  a  man  who  wanted  a  parliament  or  a 
\  \  republic,  but  a  man  who  wanted  anything  that 
he  hadn't  got.  The  emancipated  man  must 
cast  a  weird  and  suspicious  eye  round  him  at 
all  the  institutions  of  the  world,  wondering 
which  of  them  was  destined  to  die  in  the  next 
few  centuries.  Each  one  of  them  was  whisper- 
ing to  himself,  "What  can  I  alter?'' 

This  quite  vague  and  varied  discontent 
probably  did  lead  to  the  revelation  of  many 
incidental  wrongs  and  to  much  humane  hard 
work  in  certain  holes  and  corners.  It  also 
gave  birth  to  a  great  deal  of  quite  futile  and 
frantic  speculation,  which  seemed  destined  to 
take  away  babies  from  women,  or  to  give  votes 
to  tom-cats.  But  it  had  an  evil  in  it  much 
deeper  and  more  psychologically  poisonous 
than  any  superficial  absurdities.  There  was  in 
this  thirst  to  be  "progressive"  a  subtle  sort  of 
double-mindedness  and  falsity.  A  man  was  so 
eager  to  be  in  advance  of  his  age  that  he  pre- 
tended to  be  in  advance  of  himself.  Institu- 
tions that  his  wholesome  nature  and  habit  fully 
accepted  he  had  to  sneer  at  as  old-fashioned, 
out  of  a  servile  and  snobbish  fear  of  the  future. 
Out  of  the  primal  forests,  through  all  the  real 
progress  of  history,  man  had  picked  his  way 

62 


The  Progressive 


obeying  his  human  instinct,  or  (in  the  excellent 
phrase)  following  his  nose.  But  now  he  was 
trying,  by  violent  athletic  exertions,  to  get  in 
front  of  his  nose. 

Into  this  riot  of  all  imaginary  innovations 
Shaw  brought  the  sharp  edge  of  the  Irishman 
and  the  concentration  of  the  Puritan,  and 
thoroughly  thrashed  all  competitors  in  the 
difficult  art  of  being  at  once  modern  and 
intelligent.  In  twenty  twopenny  controversies 
he  took  the  revolutionary  side,  I  fear  in  most 
cases  because  it  was  called  revolutionary.  But 
the  other  revolutionists  were  abruptly  startled 
by  the  presentation  of  quite  rational  and  in- 
genious arguments  on  their  own  side.  The 
dreary  thing  about  most  new  causes  is  that 
they  are  praised  in  such  very  old  terms.  Every 
new  reHgion  bores  us  with  the  same  stale 
rhetoric  about  closer  fellowship  and  the  higher 
life.  No  one  ever  approximately  equalled 
Bernard  Shaw  in  the  power  of  finding  really 
fresh  and  personal  arguments  for  these  recent 
schemes  and  creeds.  No  one  ever  came  within 
a  mile  of  him  in  the  knack  of  actually  produc- 
ing a  new  argument  for  a  new  philosophy.  I 
give  two  instances  to  cover  the  kind  of  thing  I 
mean.  Bernard  Shaw  (being  honestly  eager 
to  put  himself  on  the  modern  side  in  every- 

63 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


thing)  put  himself  on  the  side  of  what  is 
i/  called  the  feminist  movement;  the  proposal 
to  give  the  two  sexes  not  merely  equal  social 
^,  privileges,  but  identical.  To  this  it  is  often 
answered  that  women  cannot  be  soldiers;  and 
to  this  again  the  sensible  feminists  answer  that 
women  run  their  own  kind  of  physical  risk, 
while  the  silly  feminists  answer  that  war  is  an 
outworn  barbaric  thing  which  women  would 
abolish.  But  Bernard  Shaw  took  the  line  of 
saying  that  women  had  been  soldiers.  In  all 
occasions  of  natural  and  unofficial  war,  as  in 
the  French  Revolution.  That  has  the  great 
fighting  value  of  being  an  unexpected  argu- 
ment; it  takes  the  other  pugilist's  breath 
away  for  one  Important  Instant.  To  take  the 
other  case,  Mr.  Shaw  has  found  himself,  led 
by  the  same  mad  imp  of  modernity,  on  the 
side  of  the  people  who  want  to  have  phonetic 
spelling.  The  people  who  want  phonetic  spell- 
ing generally  depress  the  world  with  tireless 
and  tasteless  explanations  of  how  much  easier 
It  would  be  for  children  or  foreign  bagmen 
if  "height"  were  spelt  "hite."  Now  children 
would  curse  spelling  whatever  it  was,  and  we  are 
not  going  to  permit  foreign  bagmen  to  Improve 
Shakespeare.  Bernard  Shaw  charged  along 
quite   a   different   line;   he   urged   that   Shake- 

64 


The  Progressive 


speare  himself  believed  In  phonetic  spelling, 
since  he  spelt  his  own  name  In  six  different 
ways.  According  to  Shaw,  phonetic  spelling 
is  merely  a  return  to  the  freedom  and  flexi- 
bility of  Elizabethan  literature.  That,  agaln,^ 
is  exactly  the  kind  of  blow  the  old  speller 
does  not  expect.  As  a  matter  of  fact  there 
is  an  answer  to  both  the  ingenuities  I  have 
quoted.  When  women  have  fought  in  revo- 
lutions they  have  generally  shown  that  it  was 
not  natural  to  them,  by  their  hysterical  cruelty 
and  insolence;  it  was  the  men  who  fought  in 
the  Revolution;  it  was  the  women  who  tortured 
the  prisoners  and  mutilated  the  dead.  And 
because  Shakespeare  could  sing  better  than  he 
could  spell.  It  does  not  follow  that  his  spelling 
and  ours  ought  to  be  abruptly  altered  by  a 
race  that  has  lost  all  instinct  for  singing.  But 
I  do  not  wish  to  discuss  these  points;  I  only 
quote  them  as  examples  of  the  startling  ability 
which  really  brought  Shaw  to  the  front;  the 
ability  to  brighten  even  our  modern  move- 
ments with  original  and  suggestive  thoughts. 

But  while  Bernard  Shaw  pleasantly  sur- 
prised Innumerable  cranks  and  revolutionists 
by  finding  quite  rational  arguments  for  them, 
he  surprised  them  unpleasantly  also  by  dis- 
covering   something    else.      He    discovered    a 

E  65 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


turn  of  argument  or  trick  of  thought  which 
has  ever  since  been  the  plague  of  their  Hves, 
and  given  him  in  all  assemblies  of  their 
kind,  in  the  Fabian  Society  or  in  the  whole 
Socialist  movement,  a  fantastic  but  most  for- 
midable domination.  This  method  may  be 
approximately  defined  as  that  of  revolu- 
tionising the  revolutionists  by  turning  their 
rationalism  against  their  remaining  senti- 
mentalism.  But  definition  leaves  the  matter 
dark  unless  we  give  one  or  two  examples. 
Thus  Bernard  Shaw  threw  himself  as  thor- 
oughly as  any  New  Woman  into  the  cause 
of  the  emancipation  of  women.  But  while  the 
New  Woman  praised  woman  as  a  prophetess, 
the  new  man  took  the  opportunity  to  curse 
her  and  kick  her  as  a  comrade.  For  the 
others  sex  equality  meant  the  emancipation  of 
women,  which  allowed  them  to  be  equal  to 
men.  For  Shaw  it  mainly  meant  the  eman- 
cipation of  men,  which  allowed  them  to  be 
rude  to  women.  Indeed,  almost  every  one 
of  Bernard  Shaw's  earlier  plays  might  be 
called  an  argument  between  a  man  and  a 
woman,  in  which  the  woman  is  thumped  and 
thrashed  and  outwitted  until  she  admits  that 
she  is  the  equal  of  her  conqueror.  This  is 
the  first  case  of  the  Shavian  trick  of  turning 

66 


The  Progressive 


on  the  romantic  rationalists  with  their  own 
rationaHsm.  He  said  in  substance,  "If  we 
are  democrats,  let  us  have  votes  for  women; 
but  if  we  are  democrats,  why  on  earth  should 
we  have  respect  for  women?"  I  take  one 
other  example  out  of  many.  Bernard  Shaw 
was  thrown  early  into  what  may  be  called 
the  cosmopolitan  club  of  revolution.  The 
Socialists  of  the  S.D.F.  call  it  "  L'lnter- 
nationale,"  but  the  club  covers  more  than 
Socialists.  It  covers  many  who  consider  them- 
selves the  champions  of  oppressed  nationalities 
— Poland,  Finland,  and  even  Ireland;  and 
thus  a  strong  nationaHst  tendency  exists  in 
the  revolutionary  movement.  Against  this 
nationalist  tendency  Shaw  set  himself  with 
sudden  violence.  If  the  flag  of  England  was 
a  piece  of  piratical  humbug,  was  not  the  flag 
of  Poland  a  piece  of  piratical  humbug  too  t 
If  we  hated  the  jingoism  of  the  existing  armies 
and  frontiers,  why  should  we  bring  into 
existence  new  jingo  armies  and  new  jingo 
frontiers }  All  the  other  revolutionists  fell 
in  instinctively  with  Home  Rule  for  Ireland. 
Shaw  urged,  in  effect,  that  Home  Rule  was  as 
bad  as  Home  Influences  and  Home  Cooking, 
and  all  the  other  degrading  domesticities  that 
began  with  the  word  "Home."     His  ultimate 

67 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


support  of  the  South  African  war  was  largely 
created  by  his  irritation  against  the  other 
revolutionists  for  favouring  a  nationalist  re- 
sistance. The  ordinary  Imperialists  objected 
to  Pro-Boers  because  they  were  anti-patriots. 
Bernard  Shaw  objected  to  Pro-Boers  because 
they  were  pro-patriots. 

But  among  these  surprise  attacks  of  G.  B.  S., 
these  turnings  of  scepticism  against  the  sceptics, 
there  was  one  which  has  figured  largely  in  his 
life;  the  most  amusing  and  perhaps  the  most 
salutary  of  all  these  reactions.  The  "progres- 
sive" world  being  in  revolt  against  religion 
had  naturally  felt  itself  allied  to  science;  and 
against  the  authority  of  priests  it  would  per- 
petually hurl  the  authority  of  scientific  men. 
Shaw  gazed  for  a  few  moments  at  this  new 
authority,  the  veiled  god  of  Huxley  and  Tyn- 
dall,  and  then  with  the  greatest  placidity 
and  precision  kicked  it  in  the  stomach.  He 
declared  to  the  astounded  progressives  around 
him  that  physical  science  was  a  mystical  fake 
like  sacerdotalism;  that  scientists,  like  priests, 
spoke  with  authority  because  they  could  not 
speak  with  proof  or  reason;  that  the  very 
wonders  of  science  were  mostly  lies,  like  the 
wonders  of  religion.  "When  astonomers  tell 
me,"  he  says  somewhere,  "that  a  star  is  so  far 

68 


The  Progressive 


off  that  its  light  takes  a  thousand  years  to  reach 
us,  the  magnitude  of  the  lie  seems  to  me  in- 
artistic." The  paralysing  impudence  of  such 
remarks  left  every^one  quite  breathless;  and 
even  to  this  day  this  particular  part  of  Shaw's 
satiric  war  has  been  far  less  followed  up  than 
it  deserves.  For  there  was  present  in  it  an 
element  ver}'  marked  in  Shaw's  controversies; 
I  mean  that  his  apparent  exaggerations  are 
generally  much  better  backed  up  by  knowl- 
edge than  would  appear  from  their  nature. 
He  can  lure  his  enemy  on  with  fantasies  and  then 
overwhelm  him  with  facts.  Thus  the  man  of 
science,  when  he  read  some  wild  passage  in  which 
Shaw  compared  Huxley  to  a  tribal  soothsayer 
grubbing  in  the  entrails  of  animals,  supposed  the 
writer  to  be  a  mere  fantastic  whom  science  could 
crush  with  one  fing-er.  He  would  therefore  en- 
gage  in  a  controversy  with  Shaw  about  (let  us 
say)  vivisection,  and  discover  to  his  horror  that 
Shaw  really  knew  a  great  deal  about  the  subject, 
and  could  pelt  him  with  expert  witnesses  and 
hospital  reports.  Among  the  many  singular 
contradictions  in  a  singular  character,  there  is 
none  more  interesting  than  this  combination 
of  exactitude  and  industry  in  the  detail  of 
opinions  with  audacity  and  a  certain  wildness 
in  their  outline. 

69 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


This  great  game  of  catching  revolutionists 
napping,  of  catching  the  unconventional  people 
in  conventional  poses,  of  outmarching  and 
outmanoeuvring  progressives  till  they  felt  like 
conservatives,  of  undermining  the  mines  of 
Nihilists  till  they  felt  like  the  House  of  Lords, 
this  great  game  of  dishing  the  anarchists  con- 
tinued for  some  time  to  be  his  most  effective 
business.  It  w^ould  be  untrue  to  say  that  he  was 
a  cynic;  he  v^as  never  a  cynic,  for  that  implies 
a  certain  corrupt  fatigue  about  human  affairs, 
whereas  he  was  vibrating  with  virtue  and 
energy.  Nor  would  it  be  fair  to  call  him 
even  a  sceptic,  for  that  implies  a  dogma  of 
hopelessness  and  definite  belief  in  unbelief. 
But  it  would  be  strictly  just  to  describe 
him  at  this  time,  at  any  rate,  as  a  merely 
destructive  person.  He  was  one  whose .  main 
business  was,  in  his  own  view,  the  pricking 
of  illusions,  the  stripping  away  of  disguises, 
and  even  the  destruction  of  ideals.  He  was 
a  sort  of  anti-confectioner  whose  whole  busi- 
ness it  was  to  take  the  gilt  off  the  ginger- 
bread. 

Now  I  have  no  particular  objection  to 
people  who  take  the  gilt  off  the  ginger- 
bread; if  only  for  this  excellent  reason,  that 
I  am  much  fonder  of  gingerbread  than  I  am 

70 


The  Progressive 


of  gilt.  But  there  are  some  objections  to 
this  task  when  it  becomes  a  crusade  or 
an  obsession.  One  of  them  is  this:  that 
people  who  have  really  scraped  the  gilt  off 
gingerbread  generally  waste  the  rest  of  their 
lives  in  attempting  to  scrape  the  gilt  off 
gigantic  lumps  of  gold.  Such  has  too  often 
been  the  case  of  Shaw.  He  can,  if  he  likes, 
scrape  the  romance  off  the  armaments  of 
Europe  or  the  party  system  of  Great  Britain. 
But  he  cannot  scrape  the  romance  off  love 
or  military  valour,  because  it  is  all  romance, 
and  three  thousand  miles  thick.  It  cannot, 
I  think,  be  denied  that  much  of  Bernard 
Shaw's  splendid  mental  energy  has  been  wasted 
in  this  weary  business  of  gnawing  at  the 
necessary  pillars  of  all  possible  society.  But 
it  would  be  grossly  unfair  to  indicate  that 
even  in  his  first  and  most  destructive  stage 
he  uttered  nothing  except  these  accidental,  if 
arresting,  negations.  He  threw  his  whole 
genius  heavily  into  the  scale  in  favour  of  two 
positive  projects  or  causes  of  the  period. 
When  we  have  stated  these  we  have  really 
stated  the  full  intellectual  equipment  with 
which  he  started  his  literary  life. 

I  have  said  that  Shaw  was  on  the  insurgent 
side   in   everv^thing;   but   in   the   case   of  these 

71 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


two  important  convictions  he  exercised  a  solid 
power  of  choice.  When  he  first  went  to 
London  he  mixed  with  every  kind  of  revolu- 
tionary society,  and  met  every  kind  of  person 
except  the  ordinary  person.  He  knew  every- 
body, so  to  speak,  except  everybody.  He 
was  more  than  once  a  momentary  apparition 
among  the  respectable  atheists.  He  knew 
Bradlaugh  and  spoke  on  the  platforms  of  that 
Hall  of  Science  in  which  very  simple  and 
sincere  masses  of  men  used  to  hail  with  shouts 
of  joy  the  assurance  that  they  were  not  im- 
mortal. He  retains  to  this  day  something  of 
the  noise  and  narrowness  of  that  room;  as,  for 
instance,  when  he  says  that  it  is  contemptible 
to  have  a  craving  for  eternal  life.  This  pre- 
judice remains  in  direct  opposition  to  all  his 
present  opinions,  which  are  all  to  the  effect  that 
it  is  glorious  to  desire  power,  consciousness, 
and  vitality  even  for  one's  self.  But  this  old 
secularist  tag,  that  it  is  selfish  to  save  one's 
soul,  remains  with  him  long  after  he  has 
practically  glorified  selfishness.  It  is  a  relic  of 
those  chaotic  early  days.  And  just  as  he 
mingled  with  the  atheists  he  mingled  with  the 
anarchists,  who  were  in  the  eighties  a  much 
more  formidable  body  than  now,  disputing 
with  the  Socialists  on  almost  equal  terms  the 

72 


The  Progressive 


claim  to  be  the  true  heirs  of  the  Revolution. 
Shaw  still  talks  entertainingly  about  this  group. 
As  far  as  I  can  make  out,  it  was  almost  entirely 
female.  When  a  book  came  out  called  A  Girl 
among  the  Anarchists,  G.  B.  S.  was  provoked  to 
a  sort  of  explosive  reminiscence.  "A  girl 
among  the  anarchists!"  he  exclaimed  to  his 
present  biographer;  "if  they  had  said  *A  man 
among  the  anarchists'  it  w^ould  have  been 
more  of  an  adventure."  He  is  ready  to  tell 
other  tales  of  this  eccentric  environment,  most 
of  which  does  not  convey  an  impression  of  a 
very  bracing  atmosphere.  That  revolutionary 
society  must  have  contained  many  high  public 
ideals,  but  also  a  fair  number  of  low  private 
desires.  And  when  people  blame  Bernard  Shaw 
for  his  pitiless  and  prosaic  coldness,  his  cutting 
refusal  to  reverence  or  admire,  I  think  they 
should  remember  this  riff-raff  of  lawless  senti- 
mentalism  against  which  his  commonsense  had  to 
strive,  all  the  grandiloquent  *' comrades"  and  all 
the  gushing  "  affinities, "  all  the  sweetstuff  sensu- 
ality and  senseless  sulking  against  law.  If  Ber- 
nard Shaw  became  a  little  too  fond  of  throwing 
cold  water  upon  prophecies  or  ideals,  remember 
that  he  must  have  passed  much  of  his  youth 
among  cosmopolitan  idealists  who  wanted  a 
little  cold  water  in  every  sense  of  the  word. 

7Z 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


Upon  two  of  these  modern  crusades  he 
concentrated,  and,  as  I  have  said,  he  chose  them 
well.  The  first  was  broadly  what  was  called 
the  Humanitarian  cause.  It  did  not  mean  the 
cause  of  humanity,  but  rather,  if  anything,  the 
cause  of  everything  else.  At  its  noblest  it 
meant  a  sort  of  mystical  identification  of  our 
life  with  the  whole  life  of  nature.  So  a  man 
might  wince  when  a  snail  was  crushed  as  if 
his  toe  were  trodden  on;  so  a  man  might  shrink 
when  a  moth  shrivelled  as  if  his  own  hair  had 
caught  fire.  Man  might  be  a  network  of 
exquisite  nerves  running  over  the  whole 
universe,  a  subtle  spider's  web  of  pity.  This 
was  a  fine  conception;  though  perhaps  a  some- 
what severe  enforcement  of  the  theological 
conception  of  the  special  divinity  of  man.  For 
the  humanitarians  certainly  asked  of  humanity 
what  can  be  asked  of  no  other  creature;  no 
man  ever  required  a  dog  to  understand  a  cat 
or  expected  the  cow  to  cry  for  the  sorrows  of 
the  nightingale. 

Hence  this  sense  has  been  strongest  in 
saints  of  a  very  mystical  sort;  such  as  St. 
Francis  who  spoke  of  Sister  Sparrow  and 
Brother  Wolf.  Shaw  adopted  this  crusade  of 
cosmic  pity  but  adopted  it  very  much  in  his 
own  style,   severe,  explanatory,   and  even  un- 

74 


The  Progressive 


sympathetic.  He  had  no  affectionate  impulse 
to  say  "Brother  Wolf";  at  the  best  he  would 
have  said  "Citizen  Wolf,"  like  a  sound  re- 
publican. In  fact,  he  was  full  of  healthy 
human  compassion  for  the  sufferings  of 
animals;  but  in  phraseology  he  loved  to  put 
the  matter  unemotionally  and  even  harshly. 
I  was  once  at  a  debating  club  at  which  Bernard ' 
Shaw  said  that  he  was  not  a  humanitarian  at 
all,  but  only  an  economist,  that  he  merely 
hated  to  see  life  wasted  by  carelessness  or 
cruelty.  I  felt  inclined  to  get  up  and  address 
to  him  the  following  lucid  question:  "If 
when  you  spare  a  herring  you  are  only  being 
oikonomikal,  for  what  oikos  are  you  being 
nomikal?"  But  in  an  average  debating  club 
I  thought  this  question  might  not  be  quite 
clear;  so  I  abandoned  the  idea.  But  certainly 
it  is  not  plain  for  whom  Bernard  Shaw  is 
economising  if  he  rescues  a  rhinoceros  from 
an  early  grave.  But  the  truth  is  that  Shaw 
only  took  this  economic  pose  from  his  hatred 
of  appearing  sentimental.  If  Bernard  Shaw 
killed  a  dragon  and  rescued  a  princess  of 
romance,  he  would  try  to  say  "I  have  saved  a 
princess"  with  exactly  the  same  intonation  as 
"I  have  saved  a  shilling."  He  tries  to  turn 
his   own   heroism   into   a   sort   of  superhuman 

75 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


thrift.  He  would  thoroughly  sympathise 
with  that  passage  in  his  favourite  dramatic 
author  in  which  the  Button  Moulder  tells 
Peer  Gynt  that  there  is  a  sort  of  cosmic 
housekeeping;  that  God  Himself  is  very 
economical,  "and  that  is  why  He  is  so  well 
to  do."  ' 

This  combination  of  the  widest  kindness  and 
consideration  with  a  consistent  ungraciousness 
of  tone  runs  through  all  Shaw's  ethical  utter- 
ance, and  is  nowhere  more  evident  than  in  his 
attitude  towards  animals.  He  would  waste 
himself  to  a  white-haired  shadow  to  save  a 
shark  in  an  aquarium  from  inconvenience  or 
to  add  any  little  comforts  to  the  life  of  a 
carrion-crow.  He  would  defy  any  laws  or 
lose  any  friends  to  show  mercy  to  the  humblest 
beast  or  the  most  hidden  bird.  Yet  I  cannot 
recall  in  the  whole  of  his  works  or  in  the 
whole  of  his  conversation  a  single  word  of  any 
tenderness  or  Intimacy  with  any  bird  or  beast. 
It  was  under  the  influence  of  this  high  and 
almost  superhuman  sense  of  duty  that  he 
became  a  vegetarian;  and  I  seem  to  remember 
that  when  he  was  lying  sick  and  near  to  death 
at  the  end  of  his  Saturday  Review  career 
he  wrote  a  fine  fantastic  article,  declaring  that 
his    hearse    ought    to    be    drawn    by    all    the 

76 


The  Progressive 


animals  that  he  had  not  eaten.  Whenever 
that  evil  day  comes  there  will  be  no  need  to  fall 
back  on  the  ranks  of  the  brute  creation;  there 
will  be  no  lack  of  men  and  women  who  owe 
him  so  much  as  to  be  glad  to  take  the  place  of 
the  animals;  and  the  present  writer  for  one 
will  be  glad  to  express  his  gratitude  as  an 
elephant.  There  is  no  doubt  about  the 
essential  manhood  and  decency  of  Bernard 
Shaw's  instincts  in  such  matters.  And  quite 
apart  from  the  vegetarian  controversy,  I  do 
not  doubt  that  the  beasts  also  owe  him  much. 
But  when  we  come  to  positive  things  (and 
passions  are  the  only  truly  positive  things) 
that  obstinate  doubt  remains  which  remains 
after  all  eulogies  of  Shaw.  That  fixed  fancy 
sticks  to  the  mind;  that  Bernard  Shaw  is  a 
vegetarian  more  because  he  dislikes  dead 
beasts  than  because  he  likes  live  ones. 

It  was  the  same  with  the  other  great  cause 
to  which  Shaw  more  politically  though  not 
more  publicly  committed  himself.  The  actual 
English  people,  without  representation  in 
Press  or  Parliament,  but  faintly  expressed  in 
public-houses  and  music-halls,  would  connect 
Shaw  (so  far  as  they  have  heard  of  him)  with 
two  ideas;  they  would  say  first  that  he  was 
a    vegetarian,    and    second    that    he    was     a 

71 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


Socialist.  Like  most  of  the  impressions  of 
the  ignorant,  these  impressions  would  be  on 
the  whole  very  just.  My  only  purpose  here 
is  to  urge  that  Shaw's  Socialism  exemplifies 
the  same  trait  of  temperament  as  his  vege- 
tarianism. This  book  is  not  concerned  with 
Bernard  Shaw  as  a  politician  or  a  sociologist, 
but  as  a  critic  and  creator  of  drama.  I  will 
therefore  end  in  this  chapter  all  that  I  have  to 
say  about  Bernard  Shaw  as  a  politician  or  a 
political  philosopher.  I  propose  here  to 
dismiss  this  aspect  of  Shaw:  only  let  it  be 
remembered,  once  and  for  all,  that  I  am  here 
dismissing  the  most  important  aspect  of  Shaw. 
It  is  as  if  one  dismissed  the  sculpture  of 
Michael  Angelo  and  went  on  to  his  sonnets. 
Perhaps  the  highest  and  purest  thing  in  him  is 
simply  that  he  cares  more  for  politics  than  for 
anything  else;  more  than  for  art  or  for  philos- 
ophy. Socialism  is  the  noblest  thing  for 
Bernard  Shaw;  and  it  is  the  noblest  thing  in 
him.  He  really  desires  less  to  win  fame  than 
to  bear  fruit.  He  is  an  absolute  follower  of 
that  early  sage  who  wished  only  to  make  two 
blades  of  grass  grow  instead  of  one.  He  is 
a  loyal  subject  of  Henri  Quatre,  who  said 
that  he  only  wanted  every  Frenchman  to  have 
a   chicken   in   his   pot   on   Sunday;   except,   of 

78 


The  Progressive 


course,  that  he  would  call  the  repast  cannibal- 
ism. But  ccBteris  paribus  he  thinks  more  of 
that  chicken  than  of  the  eagle  of  the  universal 
empire;  and  he  is  always  ready  to  support 
the  grass  against  the  laurel. 

Yet  by  the  nature  of  this  book  the  account 
of  the  most  important  Shaw,  who  is  the 
Socialist,  must  be  also  the  most  brief.  Social- 
ism (which  I  am  not  here  concerned  either  to 
attack  or  defend)  is,  as  everyone  knows,  the 
proposal  that  all  property  should  be  nationally 
owned  that  it  may  be  more  decently  distributed. 
It  is  a  proposal  resting  upon  two  principles, 
unimpeachable  as  far  as  they  go:  first,  that 
frightful  human  calamities  call  for  immediate 
human  aid;  second,  that  such  aid  must  almost 
always  be  collectively  organised.  If  a  ship  is 
being  wrecked,  we  organise  a  lifeboat;  if  a 
house  is  on  fire,  we  organise  a  blanket;  if  half 
a  nation  is  starving,  we  must  organise  work 
and  food.  That  is  the  primary  and  powerful 
argument  of  the  Socialist,  and  everything 
that  he  adds  to  it  weakens  it.  The  only 
possible  line  of  protest  is  to  suggest  that  it  is 
rather  shocking  that  we  have  to  treat  a  normal 
nation  as  something  exceptional,  like  a  house 
on  fire  or  a  shipwreck.  But  of  such  things  it 
may  be  necessary  to  speak  later.     The  point 

79 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


here  is  that  Shaw  behaved  towards  Socialism 
just  as  he  behaved  towards  vegetarianism;  he 
offered  every  reason  except  the  emotional 
reason,  which  was  the  real  one.  When  taxed  in  a 
Daily  News  discussion  with  being  a  Socialist  for 
the  obvious  reason  that  poverty  was  cruel,  he 
said  this  was  quite  wrong;  it  was  only  because 
poverty  was  wasteful.  He  practically  professed 
that  modern  society  annoyed  him,  not  so  much 
like  an  unrighteous  kingdom,  but  rather  like 
an  untidy  room.  Everyone  who  knew  him 
knew,  of  course,  that  he  was  full  of  a  proper 
brotherly  bitterness  about  the  oppression  of 
the  poor.  But  here  again  he  would  not  admit 
that  he  was  anything  but  an  Economist. 

In  thus  setting  his  face  like  flint  against 
sentimental  methods  of  argument  he  un- 
doubtedly did  one  great  service  to  the  causes 
for  which  he  stood.  Every  vulgar  anti- 
humanitarian,  every  snob  who  wants  monkeys 
vivisected  or  beggars  flogged  has  always  fallen 
back  upon  stereotyped  phrases  like  ** maudlin" 
and  "sentimental,"  which  indicated  the  humani- 
tarian as  a  man  in  a  weak  condition  of  tears. 
The  mere  personality  of  Shaw  has  shattered 
those  foolish  phrases  for  ever.  Shaw  the 
humanitarian  was  like  Voltaire  the  humani- 
tarian, a  man  whose  satire  was  like  steel,  the 

80 


The  Progressive 


hardest  and  coolest  of  fighters,  upon  whose 
piercing  point  the  wretched  defenders  of  a 
masculine  brutality  wriggled  like  worms. 

In  this  quarrel  one  cannot  wish  Shaw  even^ 
an  inch  less  contemptuous,  for  the  people  who 
call  compassion  "sentimentalism"  deserve 
nothing  but  contempt.  In  this  one  does  not 
even  regret  his  coldness;  it  is  an  honourable 
contrast  to  the  blunderino-  emotionalism  of  the 
jingoes  and  flagellomaniacs.  The  truth  is  that 
the  ordinary  anti-humanitarian  only  manages 
to  harden  his  heart  by  having  already  softened 
his  head.  It  is  the  reverse  of  sentimental  to 
insist  that  a  nigger  is  being  burned  alive;  for 
sentimentalism  must  be  the  clinging  to  pleasant 
thoughts.  And  no  one,  not  even  a  Higher 
Evolutionist,  can  think  a  nigger  burned 
alive  a  pleasant  thought.  The  sentimental 
thing  is  to  warm  your  hands  at  the  fire  while 
denying  the  existence  of  the  nigger,  and  that 
is  the  ruling  habit  in  England,  as  it  has  been 
the  chief  business  of  Bernard  Shaw  to  show. 
And  in  this  the  brutalitarians  hate  him  not 
because  he  is  soft,  but  because  he  is  hard, 
because  he  is  not  to  be  softened  by  conventional 
excuses;  because  he  looks  hard  at  a  thing — 
and  hits  harder.  Some  foolish  fellow  of  the 
Henley-Whibley    reaction    wrote    that    if    we 

F  8i 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


were  to  be  conquerors  we  must  be  less  tender 
and  more  ruthless.  Shaw  answered  with  really 
avenging  irony,  "What  a  light  this  principle 
throws  on  the  defeat  of  the  tender  Dervish, 
the  compassionate  Zulu,  and  the  morbidly 
humane  Boxer  at  the  hands  of  the  hardy 
savages  of  England,  France,  and  Germany." 
In  that  sentence  an  idiot  is  obliterated  and  the 
whole  story  of  Europe  told;  but  it  is  im- 
mensely stiffened  by  its  ironic  form.  In  the 
same  way  Shaw  washed  away  for  ever  the  idea 
that  Socialists  were  weak  dreamers,  who  said 
that  things  might  be  only  because  they  wished 
them  to  be.  G.  B.  S.  in  argument  with  an 
individualist  showed  himself,  as  a  rule,  much 
the  better  economist  and  much  the  worse 
rhetorician.  In  this  atmosphere  arose  a 
celebrated  Fabian  Society,  of  which  he  is  still 
the  leading  spirit — a  society  which  answered 
all  charges  of  impracticable  idealism  by  push- 
ing both  its  theoretic  statements  and  its 
practical  negotiations  to  the  verge  of  cynicism. 
Bernard  Shaw  was  the  literary  expert  who 
wrote  most  of  its  pamphlets.  In  one  of  them, 
among  such  sections  as  Fabian  Temperance 
Reform^  Fabian  Education  and  so  on,  there 
was  an  entry  gravely  headed  "Fabian  Nat- 
ural   Science,"     which     stated     that     in     the 

82 


The  Progressive 


Socialist  cause  lisiht  was  needed  more  than  heat. 
Thus  the  Irish  detachment  and  the  Puritan 
austerity  did  much  good  to  the  country  and 
to  the  causes  for  which  they  were  embattled. 
But  there  was  one  thing  they  did  not  do;  they 
did  nothing  for  Shaw  himself  in  the  matter 
of  his  primary  mistakes  and  his  real  Hmitation. 
His  great  defect  was  and  is  the  lack  of  demo- 
cratic sentiment.  And  there  was  nothing 
democratic  either  in  his  humanitarianism  or 
his  Socialism.  These  new  and  refined  faiths 
tended  rather  to  make  the  Irishman  yet  more 
aristocratic,  the  Puritan  yet  more  exclusive. 
To  be  a  Socialist  was  to  look  down  on  all  the 
peasant  owners  of  the  earth,  especially  on  the 
peasant  owners  of  his  own  island.  To  be  a 
Vegetarian  was  to  be  a  man  with  a  strange 
and  mysterious  morality,  a  man  who  thought 
the  good  lord  who  roasted  oxen  for  his  vassals 
only  less  bad  than  the  bad  lord  who  roasted 
the  vassals.  None  of  these  advanced  view^s  could 
the  common  people  hear  gladly;  nor  indeed 
was  Shaw  specially  anxious  to  please  the  com- 
mon people.  It  was  his  glor}^  that  he  pitied 
animals  like  men;  it  was  his  defect  that  he 
pitied  men  only  too  much  like  animals.  Foulon 
said  of  the  democracy,  "Let  them  eat  grass." 
Shaw   said,   "Let  them   eat   greens."    He   had 

83 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


more  benevolence,  but  almost  as  much  disdain. 
"I  have  never  had  any  feelings  about  the 
English  working  classes/'  he  said  elsewhere, 
"except  a  desire  to  abolish  them  and  replace 
them  by  sensible  people."  This  is  the  un- 
sympathetic side  of  the  thing;  but  it  had 
another  and  much  nobler  side,  which  must  at 
least  be  seriously  recognised  before  we  pass  on 
to  much  lighter  things. 

Bernard  Shaw  is  not  a  democrat;  but  he  is 
a  splendid  republican.  The  nuance  of  differ- 
ence between  those  terms  precisely  depicts 
him.  And  there  is  after  all  a  good  deal  of  dim 
democracy  in  England,  in  the  sense  that  there 
is  much  of  a  blind  sense  of  brotherhood,  and 
nowhere  more  than  among  old-fashioned  and 
even  reactionary  people.  But  a  republican  is 
a  rare  bird,  and  a  noble  one.  Shaw  is  a 
republican  in  the  literal  and  Latin  sense;  he 
cares  more  for  the  Public  Thing  than  for  any 
private  thing.  The  interest  of  the  State  is 
with  him  a  sincere  thirst  of  the  soul,  as  it  was 
in  the  little  pagan  cities.  Now  this  public 
passion,  this  clean  appetite  for  order  and 
equity,  had  fallen  to  a  lower  ebb,  had  more 
nearly  disappeared  altogether,  during  Shaw's 
earlier  epoch  than  at  any  other  time.  In- 
dividualism of  the  worst  type  was  on  the  top 

84 


The  Progressive 


of  the   wave;    I    mean    artistic    individualism, 
which   is   so   much   crueller,   so   much    blinder 
and  so  much  more  irrational  even  than  com- 
mercial  individualism.     The   decay  of   society ' 
was  praised  by  artists  as  the  decay  of  a  corpse 
is    praised    by   worms.      The   aesthete   was    all 
receptiveness,  like  the  flea.     His  only  aff'air  in 
this  world  was  to  feed  on  its  facts  and  colours, 
like  a  parasite  upon  blood.     The  ego  was  the 
all;    and   the    praise   of  it   was   enunciated   in 
madder  and  madder  rhythms  by  poets  whose 
Helicon  was  absinthe  and  whose  Pegasus  was 
the  nightmare.     This   diseased   pride  was   not 
even  conscious  of  a  public  interest,  and  would 
have  found  all  political  terms  utterly  tasteless 
and  insignificant.     It  was  no  longer  a  question 
of  one   man   one   vote,   but  of  one   man   one 
universe. 

I  have  in  my  time  had  my  fling  at  the 
Fabian  Society,  at  the  pedantry  of  schemes, 
the  arrogance  of  experts;  nor  do  I  regret  it 
now.  But  when  I  remember  that  other  world 
against  which  it  reared  its  bourgeois  banner  of 
cleanliness  and  common  sense,  I  will  not  end 
this  chapter  without  doing  it  decent  honour. 
Give  me  the  drain  pipes  of  the  Fabians  rather 
than  the  panpipes  of  the  later  poets;  the  drain 
pipes  have  a  nicer  smell.     Give  me  even  that 

85 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


businesslike  benevolence  that  herded  men  like 
beasts  rather  than  that  exquisite  art  which  iso- 
lated them  like  devils;  give  me  even  the  sup- 
pression of  "Zaeo"  rather  than  the  triumph  of 
'*  Salome."  And  if  I  feel  such  a  confession  to 
be  due  to  those  Fabians  who  could  hardly  have 
been  anything  but  experts  in  any  society,  such 
as  Mr.  Sidney  Webb  or  Mr.  Edward  Pease, 
it  is  due  yet  more  strongly  to  the  greatest  of 
the  Fabians.  Here  was  a  man  who  could 
have  enjoyed  art  among  the  artists,  who  could 
have  been  the  wittiest  of  all  the  flaneurs;  who 
could  have  made  epigrams  like  diamonds  and 
drunk  music  like  wine.  He  has  instead 
laboured  in  a  mill  of  statistics  and  crammed 
his  mind  with  all  the  most  dreary  and  the 
most  filthy  details,  so  that  he  can  argue  on 
the  spur  of  the  moment  about  sewing-machines 
or  sewage,  about  typhus  fever  or  twopenny 
tubes.  The  usual  mean  theory  of  motives 
will  not  cover  the  case;  it  is  not  ambition,  for 
he  could  have  been  twenty  times  more  promi- 
nent as  a  plausible  and  popular  humorist.  It 
is  the  real  and  ancient  emotion  of  the  salus 
populi,  almost  extinct  in  our  oligarchical  chaos; 
nor  will  I  for  one,  as  I  pass  on  to  many 
matters  of  argument  or  quarrel,  neglect  to 
salute  a  passion  so  implacable  and  so  pure. 

86 


The  Critic 

IT  appears  a  point  of  some  mystery  to  the 
present  writer  that  Bernard  Shaw  should 
have  been  so  long  unrecognised  and  al- 
most in  beggary.  I  should  have  thought 
his  talent  was  of  the  ringing  and  arresting 
sort;  such  as  even  editors  and  publishers 
would  have  sense  enough  to  seize.  Yet  it  is 
quite  certain  that  he  almost  starved  in  London 
for  many  years,  writing  occasional  columns 
for  an  advertisement  or  words  for  a  picture. 
And  it  is  equally  certain  (it  is  proved  by 
twenty  anecdotes,  but  no  one  who  knows 
Shaw  needs  any  anecdotes  to  prove  it)  that  in 
those  days  of  desperation  he  again  and  again 
threw  up  chances  and  flung  back  good  bar- 
gains which  did  not  suit  his  unique  and 
erratic  sense  of  honour.  The  fame  of  having 
first  offered  Shaw  to  the  public  upon  a  plat- 
form worthy  of  him  belongs,  like  many  other 
public  services,  to  Mr.  William  Archer. 

I  say  it  seems  odd  that  such  a  writer  should 
not  be  appreciated  in  a  flash;  but  upon  this 
point  there  is  evidently  a  real  difference  of 
opinion,  and  it  constitutes  for  me  the  strangest 

87 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


difficulty  of  the  subject.  I  hear  many  people 
complain  that  Bernard  Shaw  deliberately  mysti- 
fies them.  I  cannot  imagine  what  they  mean; 
it  seems  to  me  that  he  deliberately  insults 
them.  His  language,  especially  on  moral 
questions,  is  generally  as  straight  and  solid  as 
that  of  a  bargee  and  far  less  ornate  and  sym- 
bolic than  that  of  a  hansom-cabman.  The 
prosperous  English  Philistine  complains  that 
Mr.  Shaw  is  making  a  fool  of  him.  Whereas 
Mr.  Shaw  is  not  in  the  least  making  a  fool  of 
him;  Mr.  Shaw  is,  with  laborious  lucidity, 
calling  him  a  fool.  G.  B.  S.  calls  a  landlord 
a  thief;  and  the  landlord,  instead  of  denying 
or  resenting  it,  says,  "Ah,  that  fellow  hides 
his  meaning  so  cleverly  that  one  can  never 
make  out  what  he  means,  it  is  all  so  fine  spun 
and  fantastical."  G.  B.  S.  calls  a  statesman  a 
liar  to  his  face,  and  the  statesman  cries  in  a 
kind  of  ecstasy,  "Ah,  what  quaint,  intricate 
and  half-tangled  trains  of  thought!  Ah, 
what  elusive  and  many-coloured  mysteries  of 
half-meaning!"  I  think  it  is  always  quite 
plain  what  Mr.  Shaw  means,  even  when  he  is 
joking,  and  it  generally  means  that  the  people 
he  is  talking  to  ought  to  howl  aloud  for  their 
sins.  But  the  average  representative  of  them 
undoubtedly    treats    the    Shavian    meaning    as 

88 


The  Critic 


tricky  and  complex,  when  It  is  really  direct 
and  offensive.  He  always  accuses  Shaw  of 
pulling  his  leg,  at  the  exact  moment  when 
Shaw  is  pulling  his  nose. 

This  prompt  and  pungent  style  he  learnt  in 
the  open,  upon  political  tubs  and  platforms;  and 
he  is  very  legitimately  proud  of  it.  He  boasts 
of  being  a  demagogue;  "The  cart  and  the 
trumpet  for  me,"  he  says,  with  admirable  good 
sense.  Everyone  will  remember  the  effective 
appearance  of  Cyrano  de  Bergerac  in  the  first  act 
of  the  fine  play  of  that  name;  when  instead 
of  leaping  in  by  any  hackneyed  door  or  window, 
he  suddenly  springs  upon  a  chair  above  the 
crowd  that  has  so  far  kept  him  invisible;  "les 
bras  croises,  le  feutre  en  bataille,  la  moustache 
herissee,  le  nez  terrible."  I  will  not  go  so 
far  as  to  say  that  when  Bernard  Shaw  sprang 
upon  a  chair  or  tub  in  Trafalgar  Square  he 
had  the  hat  in  battle,  or  even  that  he  had  the 
nose  terrible.  But  just  as  we  see  Cyrano  best 
when  he  thus  leaps  above  the  crowd,  I  think 
we  may  take  this  moment  of  Shaw  stepping 
on  his  little  platform  to  see  him  clearly  as  he 
then  was,  and  even  as  he  has  largely  not  ceased 
to  be.  I,  at  least,  have  only  known  him  in  his 
middle  age;  yet  I  think  I  can  see  him,  younger 
yet  only  a  little  more  alert,  with  hair  more  red 

89 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


but  with  face  yet  paler,  as  he  first  stood  up  upon 
some  cart  or  barrow  in  the  tossing  glare  of  the 
gas. 

The  first  fact  that  one  realises  about  Shaw 
(independent  of  all  one  has  read  and  often 
contradicting  it)  is  his  voice.  Primarily  it  is 
the  voice  of  an  Irishman,  and  then  something 
of  the  voice  of  a  musician.  It  possibly  ex- 
plains much  of  his  career;  a  man  may  be 
permitted  to  say  so  many  impudent  things 
with  so  pleasant  an  intonation.  But  the  voice 
is  not  only  Irish  and  agreeable,  it  is  also  frank 
and  as  it  were  inviting  conference.  This  goes 
with  a  style  and  gesture  which  can  only  be 
described  as  at  once  very  casual  and  very 
emphatic.  He  assumes  that  bodily  supremacy 
which  goes  with  oratory,  but  he  assumes  it 
with  almost  ostentatious  carelessness;  he 
throws  back  the  head,  but  loosely  and  laugh- 
ingly. He  is  at  once  swaggering  and  yet  shrug- 
ging his  shoulders,  as  if  to  drop  from  them  the 
mantle  of  the  orator  which  he  has  confidently 
assumed.  Lastly,  no  man  ever  used  voice  or 
gesture  better  for  the  purpose  of  expressing 
certainty;  no  man  can  say  "I  tell  Mr.  Jones 
he  is  totally  wrong"  with  more  air  of  unforced 
and  even  casual  conviction. 

This  particular  play  of  feature  or  pitch  of 

90 


The  Critic 

voice,  at  once  didactic  and  yet  not  uncomrade- 
like,  must  be  counted  a  very  important  fact, 
especially  in  connection  with  the  period  when 
that  voice  was  first  heard.  It  must  be  remem- 
bered that  Shaw  emerged  as  a  wit  in  a  sort  of 
secondary  age  of  w4ts;  one  of  those  stale  inter- 
ludes of  prematurely  old  young  m.en,  which 
separate  the  serious  epochs  of  history.  Oscar 
Wilde  was  its  god;  but  he  was  somewhat  more 
mystical,  not  to  say  monstrous,  than  the  average 
of  its  dried  and  decorous  impudence.  The 
two  survivals  of  that  time,  as  far  as  I  know, 
are  Mr.  Max  Beerbohm  and  Mr.  Graham 
Robertson;  two  most  charming  people;  but 
the  air  they  had  to  live  in  was  the  devil. 
One  of  its  notes  was  an  artificial  reticence  of » 
speech,  which  waited  till  it  could  plant  the 
perfect  epigram.  Its  typical  products  were  far 
too  conceited  to  lay  down  the  law.  Now  when 
people  heard  that  Bernard  Shaw  was  witty,  as 
he  most  certainly  was,  when  they  heard  his 
mots  repeated  Hke  those  of  Whistler  or  Wilde, 
when  they  heard  things  like  "the  Seven  deadly 
Virtues"  or  "Who  %vas  Hall  Caine?"  they 
expected  another  of  these  silent  sarcastic 
dandies  who  went  about  with  one  epigram, 
patient  and  poisonous,  like  a  bee  with  his  one 
sting.     And  when  they  saw  and  heard  the  new 

91 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


humorist  they  found  no  fixed  sneer,  no  frock 
coat,  no  green  carnation,  no  silent  Savoy 
Restaurant  good  manners,  no  fear  of  looking  a 
fool,  no  particular  notion  of  looking  a  gentleman. 
They  found  a  talkative  Irishman  v^ith  a  kind 
voice  and  a  brown  coat;  open  gestures  and  an 
evident  desire  to  make  people  really  agree 
w^ith  him.  He  had  his  own  kind  of  affectations 
no  doubt,  and  his  own  kind  of  tricks  of  debate; 
but  he  broke,  and,  thank  God,  forever  the 
spell  of  the  little  man  with  the  single  eye  glass 
who  had  frozen  both  faith  and  fun  at  so  many 
tea-tables.  Shaw's  humane  voice  and  hearty 
manner  were  so  obviously  more  the  things  of  a 
great  man  than  the  hard,  gem-like  brilliancy 
of  Wilde  or  the  careful  ill-temper  of  Whistler. 
He  brought  in  a  breezier  sort  of  insolence; 
the  single  eye-glass  fled  before  the  single  eye. 
Added  to  the  effect  of  the  amiable  dogmatic 
voice  and  lean,  loose  swaggering  figure,  is 
that  of  the  face  with  which  so  many  carica- 
turists have  fantastically  delighted  themselves, 
the  Mephistophilean  face  with  the  fierce  tufted 
eyebrows  and  forked  red  beard.  Yet  those 
caricaturists  in  their  natural  delight  in  com- 
ing upon  so  striking  a  face,  have  somewhat 
misrepresented  it,  making  it  merely  Satanic; 
whereas    its    actual    expression    has    quite    as 

92 


The  Critic 

much  benevolence  as  mockery.  By  this  time 
his  costume  has  become  a  part  of  his  person- 
ality; one  has  come  to  think  of  the  reddish 
brown  Jaeger  suit  as  if  it  were  a  sort  of  reddish 
brown  fur,  and  were,  like  the  hair  and  eyebrows, 
a  part  of  the  animal;  yet  there  are  those  who 
claim  to  remember  a  Bernard  Shaw  of  yet 
more  awful  aspect  before  Jaeger  came  to  his 
assistance;  a  Bernard  Shaw  in  a  dilapidated 
frock-coat  and  some  sort  of  straw  hat.  I  can 
hardly  believe  it;  the  man  is  so  much  of  a 
piece,  and  must  always  have  dressed  appropri- 
ately. In  any  case  his  brown  woollen  clothes, 
at  once  artistic  and  hygienic,  completed  the 
appeal  for  which  he  stood;  which  might  be 
defined  as  an  eccentric  healthy-mindedness. 
But  something  of  the  vagueness  and  equivoca- 
tion of  his  first  fame  is  probably  due  to  the 
different  functions  which  he  performed  in  the 
contemporary  world  of  art. 

He  began  by  writing  novels.  They  are 
not  much  read,  and  indeed  not  imperatively 
worth  reading,  with  the  one  exception  of  the 
crude  and  magnificent  Cashel  Byron  s  Pro- 
fession. Mr.  William  Archer,  in  the  course 
of  his  kindly  efforts  on  behalf  of  his  young 
Irish  friend,  sent  this  book  to  Samoa,  for  the 
opinion    of  the    most   elvish    and   yet   efficient 

93 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


of  modern  critics.  Stevenson  summed  up 
much  of  Shaw  even  from  that  fragment  when 
he  spoke  of  a  romantic  griffin  roaring  with 
laughter  at  the  nature  of  his  own  quest.  He 
also  added  the  not  wholly  unjustified  post- 
script: "I  say,  Archer, — my  God,  what 
women!" 

The  fiction  was  largely  dropped;  but  when 
he  began  work  he  felt  his  way  by  the  avenues 
of  three  arts.  He  was  an  art  critic,  a  dramatic 
critic,  and  a  musical  critic;  and  in  all  three, 
it  need  hardly  be  said,  he  fought  for  the 
newest  style  and  the  most  revolutionary 
school.  He  wrote  on  all  these  as  he  would 
have  written  on  anything;  but  it  was,  I  fancy, 
about  the  music  that  he  cared  most. 

It  may  often  be  remarked  that  mathe- 
maticians love  and  understand  music  more 
than  they  love  or  understand  poetry.  Bernard 
Shaw  is  in  much  the  same  condition;  indeed, 
in  attempting  to  do  justice  to  Shakespeare's 
poetry,  he  always  calls  it  "word  music."  It 
is  not  difficult  to  explain  this  special  attach- 
ment of  the  mere  logician  to  music.  The 
logician,  like  every  other  man  on  earth,  must 
have  sentiment  and  romance  in  his  existence; 
in  every  man's  life,  indeed,  which  can  be  called 
a  life  at  all,  sentiment  is  the  most  solid  thing. 

94 


The  Critic 

But  if  the  extreme  logician  turns  for  his  emo- 
tions to  poetry,  he  is  exasperated  and  bewildered 
by  discovering  that  the  words  of  his  own  trade 
are    used    in    an    entirely    different    meaning. 
He    conceives   that    he    understands    the   word 
"visible,"   and   then   finds   Milton    applying  it 
to  darkness,  in  which  nothing  is  visible.     He 
supposes  that  he  understands  the  word  "hide," 
and  then  finds  Shelley  talking  of  a  poet  hidden 
in   the   light.      He   has   reason   to   believe   that 
he    understands    the    common    word    "hung"; 
and    then    William    Shakespeare,    Esquire,    of 
Stratford-on-Avon,    gravely    assures    him    that 
the    tops    of   the    tall    sea    waves    were    hung 
with  deafening  clamours  on  the  slippery  clouds. 
That  is  why  the  common  arithmetician  prefers 
music  to  poetry.     Words  are  his  scientific  in- 
struments.     It  irritates   him  that   they   should 
be  anyone  else's   musical  instruments.      He  is 
willing    to    see  men    juggling,    but    not    men 
juggling  with  his  own  private  tools   and   pos- 
sessions— his  terms.     It  is  then  that  he  turns 
with  an  utter  relief  to  music.     Here  are  all  the 
same  fascination  and  inspiration,  all  the  same 
purity   and   plunging   force   as   in   poetry;   but 
not  requiring  any  verbal  confession  that  light 
conceals  things  or  that  darkness  can  be  seen 
in    the    dark.      Music    is    mere    beauty;    it    is 

95 


George  Bernard  Shaiv 


beauty  in  the  abstract,  beauty  In  solution.  It 
is  a  shapeless  and  Hquid  element  of  beauty,  in 
which  a  man  may  really  float,  not  indeed  affirm- 
ing the  truth,  but  not  denying  it.  Bernard 
Shaw,  as  I  have  already  said,  is  infinitely  far 
above  all  such  mere  mathematicians  and  pe- 
dantic reasoners;  still  his  feeling  is  partly  the 
same.  He  adores  music  because  it  cannot 
deal  with  romantic  terms  either  in  their  right 
or  their  wrong  sense.  Music  can  be  romantic 
without  reminding  him  of  Shakespeare  and 
Walter  Scott,  with  whom  he  has  had  personal 
quarrels.  Music  can  be  Catholic  without 
reminding  him  verbally  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  which  he  has  never  seen,  and  is 
sure  he  does  not  like.  Bernard  Shaw  can 
agree  with  Wagner,  the  musician,  because 
he  speaks  without  words;  if  it  had  been 
Wagner  the  man  he  would  certainly  have 
had  words  with  him.  Therefore  I  would 
suggest  that  Shaw's  love  of  music  (which 
is  so  fundamental  that  it  must  be  men- 
tioned early,  if  not  first,  in  his  story)  may 
itself  be  considered  in  the  first  case  as  the 
imaginative  safety-valve  of  the  rationalistic 
Irishman. 

This   much   may  be  said  conjecturally  over 
the  present  signature;  but  more  must  not  be 

96 


The  Critic 

said.  Bernard  Shaw  understands  music  so 
much  better  than  I  do  that  it  is  just  possible 
that  he  is,  in  that  tongue  and  atmosphere,  all 
that  he  is  not  elsewhere.  While  he  is  writing 
with  a  pen  I  know  his  limitations  as  much  as 
I  admire  his  genius;  and  I  know  it  is  true  to 
say  that  he  does  not  appreciate  romance.  But 
while  he  is  playing  on  the  piano  he  may  be 
cocking  a  feather,  drawing  a  sword  or  draining 
a  flagon  for  all  I  know.  While  he  is  speaking  I 
am  sure  that  there  are  some  things  he  does  not 
understand.  But  while  he  is  listening  (at  the 
Queen's  Hall)  he  may  understand  everything, 
including  God  and  me.  Upon  this  part  of 
him  I  am  a  reverent  agnostic;  it  is  well  to 
have  some  such  dark  continent  in  the  character 
of  a  man  of  whom  one  writes.  It  preserves 
two  very  important  things — modesty  in  the  biog- 
rapher and  mystery  in  the  biography. 

For  the  purpose  of  our  present  generalisa- 
tion it  is  only  necessary  to  say  that  Shaw,  as  a 
musical  critic,  summed  himself  up  as  "The 
Perfect  Wagnerite";  he  threw  himself  into 
subtle  and  yet  trenchant  eulogy  of  that  revolu- 
tionary voice  in  music.  It  was  the  same  with 
the  other  arts.  As  he  was  a  Perfect  Wagnerite 
in  music,  so  he  was  a  Perfect  Whistlerite  in 
painting;  so  above  all  he  was  a  Perfect  Ibsenite 

G  97 


George  Ber7iard  Shmv 


in  drama.    And  with  this  we  enter  that  part 
of  his   career   with   which   this    book    is    more 

I  specially  concerned.  When  Mr.  William 
Archer  got  him  established  as  dramatic  critic 
of  the  Saturday  Review,  he  became  for  the  first 
time   "a   star  of  the   stage";   a    shooting   star 

*  and  sometimes  a  destroying  comet. 

On  the  day  of  that  appointment  opened 
one  of  the  very  few  exhilarating  and  honest 
battles  that  broke  the  silence  of  the  slow  and 

/  cynical    collapse    of    the     nineteenth    century. 

j  Bernard  Shaw  the  demagogue  had  got  his 
cart  and  his  trumpet;  and  was  resolved  to 
make  them  like  the  car  of  destiny  and  the 
trumpet  of  judgment.  He  had  not  the  ser- 
vility of  the  ordinary  rebel,  who  is  content  to 
go  on  rebelling  against  kings  and  priests, 
because  such  rebellion  is  as  old  and  as  estab- 
lished as  any  priests  or  kings.  He  cast  about 
him  for  something  to  attack  which  was  not 
merely  powerful  or  placid,  but  was  unattacked. 
After  a  little  quite  sincere  reflection,  he  found 
it.  He  would  not  be  content  to  be  a  common 
atheist;  he  wished  to  blaspheme  something 
in  which  even  atheists  believed.  He  was  not 
satisfied  with  being  revolutionary;  there  were 
so  many  revolutionists.  He  wanted  to  pick 
out  some  prominent  institution  which  had  been 

98 


The  Critic 

irrationally  and  instinctively  accepted  by  the 
most  violent  and  profane;  something  of  which 
j\Ir.  Foote  would  speak  as  respectfully  on  the 
front  page  of  the  Freethinker  as  Mr.  St.  Loe 
Strachey  on  the  front  page  of  the  Spectator, 
He  found  the  thing;  he  found  the  great 
unassailed   English  institution — Shakespeare. 

But  Shawn's  attack  on  Shakespeare,  though  . 
exaggerated  for  the  fun  of  the  thing,  vv^as  not 
by  any  means  the  mere  folly  or  firework 
paradox  that  has  been  supposed.  He  meant 
what  he  said;  what  was  called  his  levity  was 
merely  the  laughter  of  a  man  who  enjoyed  \ 
saying  what  he  meant — an  occupation  which 
is  indeed  one  of  the  greatest  larks  in  life.  1 
Moreover,  it  can  honestly  be  said  that  Shaw 
did  good  by  shaking  the  mere  idolatry  of  Him 
of  Avon.  That  idolatry  was  bad  for  England; 
it  buttressed  our  perilous  self-complacency  by 
makinp;  us  think  that  we  alone  had,  not 
merely  a  great  poet,  but  the  one  poet  above 
criticism.  It  w^as  bad  for  literature;  it  made 
a  minute  model  out  of  work  that  was  really 
a  hasty  and  faulty  masterpiece.  And  it  was 
bad  for  religion  and  morals  that  there  should 
be  so  huge  a  terrestrial  idol,  that  we  should 
put  such  utter  and  unreasoning  trust  in  any 
child   of  man.     It  is  true  that  it  was   largely 

99 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


throuo;h  Shaw's  own  defects  that  he  beheld  the 
defects  of  Shakespeare.  But  it  needed  some- 
one equally  prosaic  to  resist  what  was  perilous 
in  the  charm  of  such  poetry;  it  may  not  be 
altogether  a  mistake  to  send  a  deaf  man  to 
destroy  the  rock  of  the  sirens. 

This  attitude  of  Shaw  illustrates  of  course 
all  three  of  the  divisions  or  aspects  to  which 
the  reader's  attention  has  been  drawn.  It  was 
partly  the  attitude  of  the  Irishman  objecting 
to  the  Englishman  turning  his  mere  artistic 
taste  into  a  religion;  especially  when  it  was 
a  taste  merely  taught  him  by  his  aunts  and 
uncles.  In  Shaw's  opinion  (one  might  say) 
the  English  do  not  really  enjoy  Shakespeare 
or  even  admire  Shakespeare;  one  can  only 
say,  in  the  strong  colloquialism,  that  they  swear 
by  Shakespeare.  He  is  a  mere  god;  a  thing 
to  be  invoked.  And  Shaw's  whole  business 
was  to  set  up  the  things  which  were  to  be 
sworn  by  as  things  to  be  sworn  at.  It  was 
partly  again  the  revolutionist  in  pursuit  of 
pure  novelty,  hating  primarily  the  oppression 
of  the  past,  almost  hating  history  itself.  For 
Bernard  Shaw  the  prophets  were  to  be  stoned 
after,  and  not  before,  men  had  built  their 
sepulchres.  There  was  a  Yankee  smartness 
in  the  man  which  was  irritated  at  the  idea  of 

xoo 


The  Critic 

being  dominated  by  a  person  dead  for  three 
hundred  years;  like  Mark  Twain,  he  wanted 
a  fresher  corpse. 

These  two  motives  there  were,  but  they 
were  small  compared  with  the  other.  It  was 
the  third  part  of  him,  the  Puritan,  that  was 
really  at  war  with  Shakespeare.  He  denounced 
that  plapvright  almost  exactly  as  any  contem- 
porary Puritan  coming  out  of  a  conventicle 
in  a  steeple-crowned  hat  and  stiff  bands  might 
have  denounced  the  playwright  coming  out  of 
the  stage  door  of  the  old  Globe  Theatre.  This 
is  not  a  mere  fancy;  it  is  philosophically  true. 
A  legend  has  run  round  the  newspapers  that 
Bernard  Shaw  offered  himself  as  a  better 
writer  than  Shakespeare.  This  is  false  and 
quite  unjust;  Bernard  Shaw  never  said  any- 
thing of  the  kind.  The  writer  whom  he  did 
say  was  better  than  Shakespeare  was  not  him- 
self, but  Bunyan.  And  he  justified  it  by  attrib- 
uting to  Bunyan  a  virile  acceptance  of  life  as 
a  high  and  harsh  adventure,  while  in  Shake- 
speare he  saw  nothing  but  profligate  pessimism, 
the  vanitas  vanitatum  of  a  disappointed  volup- 
tuary. According  to  this  view  Shakespeare 
was  always  saying,  "Out,  out,  brief  candle," 
because  his  was  only  a  ballroom  candle;  while 
Bunyan   was   seeking   to   light   such    a    candle 

lOI 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


as  by  God's  grace  should  never  be  put  out. 
It  is  odd  that  Bernard  Shaw's  chief  error 
or  insensibihty  should  have  been  the  instru- 
ment of  his  noblest  affirmation.  The 
denunciation  of  Shakespeare  was  a  mere 
misunderstanding.  But  the  denunciation  of 
Shakespeare's  pessimism  was  the  most  splen- 
didly understanding  of  all  his  utterances. 
This  is  the  greatest  thing  in  Shaw,  a  serious 
optimism — even  a  tragic  optimism.  Life  is 
a  thing  too  glorious  to  be  enjoyed.  To  be 
is  an  exacting  and  exhausting  business;  the 
trumpet  though  inspiring  is  terrible.  Nothing 
that  he  ever  wrote  is  so  noble  as  his  simple 
reference  to  the  sturdy  man  who  stepped  up  to 
^^the  Keeper  of  the  Book  of  Life  and  said, 
Put  down  my  name.  Sir."  It  is  true  that 
Shaw  called  this  heroic  philosophy  by  wrong 
names  and  buttressed  it  with  false  meta- 
physics; that  was  the  weakness  of  the  age. 
The  temporary  decline  of  theology  had  in- 
volved the  neglect  of  philosophy  and  all  fine 
thinking;  and  Bernard  Shaw  had  to  find 
shaky  justifications  in  Schopenhauer  for  the 
sons  of  God  shouting  for  joy.  He  called  it 
the  Will  to  Live — a  phrase  Invented  by 
Prussian  professors  who  would  like  to  exist, 
but    can't.      Afterwards    he    asked    people    to 

102 


it< 


The  Critic 

worship  the  Life-Force;  as  if  one  could 
worship  a  hyphen.  But  though  he  covered 
it  with  crude  new  names  (which  are  now 
fortunately  crumbling  everywhere  like  bad 
mortar)  he  was  on  the  side  of  the  good  old 
cause;  the  oldest  and  the  best  of  all  causes, 
the  cause  of  creation  against  destruction,  the 
cause  of  yes  against  no,  the  cause  of  the  seed 
against  the  stony  earth  and  the  star  against 
the  abyss. 

His  misunderstanding  of  Shakespeare   arose 
largely    from   the    fact   that    he    is    a    Puritan,^ 
.while  Shakespeare  was  spiritually  a   CathoHc.j 
The  former  is  always  screwing  himself  up  to 
see    truth;    the    latter    is    often    content    that 
truth    is   there.      The    Puritan   is    only   strong 
enough     to     stiffen;     the     Catholic     is     strong 
enough  to  relax.     Shaw,  I  think,  has  entirely 
misunderstood     the     pessimistic     passages     of 
Shakespeare.      They   are   flying   moods   which 
a  man  with  a  fixed  faith  can  afford  to  entertain. 
That  all  is  vanity,  that  life  is   dust  and  love 
is   ashes,  these  are  frivolities,  these  are  jokes 
that  a  Catholic  can  afford  to  utter.     He  knows 
well   enough   that   there   is   a   life   that   is   not 
dust  and   a  love  that  is  not  ashes.      But  just  , 
as    he    may    let    himself    go    more    than    the  \ 
Puritan    in   the    matter    of  enjoyment,    so   he  } 

103  I 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


may  let  himself  go  more  than  the  Puritan  in 
the  matter  of  melancholy.  The  sad  exuber- 
ances of  Hamlet  are  merely  like  the  glad 
exuberances  of  Falstaff.  This  is  not  con- 
jecture; it  is  the  text  of  Shakespeare.  In 
the  very  act  of  uttering  his  pessimism,  Hamlet 
admits  that  it  is  a  mood  and  not  the  truth. 
Heaven  is  a  heavenly  thing,  only  to  him  it 
seems  a  foul  congregation  of  vapours.  Man 
ts  the  paragon  of  animals,  only  to  him  he 
seems  a  quintessence  of  dust.  Hamlet  is 
quite  the  reverse  of  a  sceptic.  He  is  a  man 
whose  strong  intellect  believes  much  more 
than  his  weak  temperament  can  make  vivid 
to  him.  But  this  power  of  knowing  a  thing 
without  feeling  it,  this  power  of  believing  a 
thing  without  experiencing  it,  this  is  an  old 
Catholic  complexity,  and  the  Puritan  has  never 
understood  it.  Shakespeare  confesses  his 
moods  (mostly  by  the  mouths  of  villains  and 
failures),  but  he  never  sets  up  his  moods 
against  his  mind.  His  cry  of  vanitas  vani- 
tatum  is  itself  only  a  harmless  vanity.  Readers 
may  not  agree  with  my  calling  him  Catholic 
with  a  big  C;  but  they  will  hardly  complain 
of  my  calling  him  catholic  with  a  small  one. 
And  that  is  here  the  principal  point.  Shake- 
speare was  not  in  any  sense  a   pessimist;  he 

104 


The  Critic 

was,  if  anything,  an  optimist  so  universal  as 
to  be  able  to  enjoy  even  pessimism.  And  this 
is  exactly  where  he  differs  from  the  Puritan. 
The  true  Puritan  is  not  squeamish:  the  true 
Puritan  is  free  to  say  "Damn  It!"  But  the 
Catholic  Elizabethan  was  free  (on  passing  prov- 
ocation) to  say  "Damn  it  all!'* 

It  need  hardly  be  explained  that  Bernard 
Shaw  added  to  his  negative  case  of  a  dramatist 
to  be  depreciated  a  corresponding  affirmative 
case  of  a  dramatist  to  be  exalted  and  advanced. 
He  was  not  content  with  so  remote  a  com- 
parison as  that  between  Shakespeare  and  Bun- 
yan.  In  his  vivacious  weekly  articles  in  the 
Saturday  Review,  the  real  comparison  upon 
which  everything  turned  was  the  comparison 
between  Shakespeare  and  Ibsen.  He  early 
threw  himself  with  all  possible  eagerness  Into 
the  public  disputes  about  the  great  Scandi- 
navian; and  though  there  was  no  doubt 
whatever  about  which  side  he  supported,  there 
was  much  that  was  individual  in  the  line  he 
took.  It  is  not  our  business  here  to  explore 
that  extinct  volcano.  You  may  say  that  antl- 
Ibsenism  Is  dead,  or  you  may  say  that  Ibsen  Is 
dead;  in  any  case,  that  controversy  is  dead, 
and  death,  as  the  Roman  poet  says,  can  alone 
confess    of  what    small    atoms   we    are    made. 

105 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


r 
The  opponents  of  Ibsen  largely  exhibited  the 

permanent  qualities  of  the  populace;  that  is, 
their  instincts  were  right  and  their  reasons 
wrong.  They  made  the  complete  controver- 
sial mistake  of  calling  Ibsen  a  pessimist; 
whereas,  indeed,  his  chief  weakness  is  a  rather 
childish  confidence  in  mere  nature  and  free- 
dom, and  a  blindness  (either  of  experience  or 
of  culture)  in  the  matter  of  original  sin.  In 
this  sense  Ibsen  is  not  so  much  a  pessimist  as 
a  highly  crude  kind  of  optimist.  Nevertheless 
the  man  in  the  street  was  right  in  his  funda- 
mental instinct,  as  he  always  is.  Ibsen,  in  his 
pale  northern  style,  is  an  optimist;  but  for  all 
that  he  is  a  depressing  person.  The  optimism 
of  Ibsen  is  less  comforting  than  the  pessi- 
mism of  Dante;  just  as  a  Norwegian  sunrise, 
however  splendid,  is  colder  than  a  southern 
night. 

But  on  the  side  of  those  who  fought  for 
Ibsen  there  was  also  a  disagreement,  and  per- 
haps also  a  mistake.  The  vague  army  of  "the 
advanced"  (an  army  which  advances  in  all 
directions)  were  united  in  feeling  that  they 
ought  to  be  the  friends  of  Ibsen  because  he 
also  was  advancing  somewhere  somehow.  But 
they  were  also  seriously  impressed  by  Flau- 
bert,   by   Oscar  Wilde   and    all   the   rest  who 

io6 


The  Critic 

told  them  that  a  work  of  art  was  in  another 
universe  from  ethics  and  social  good.  There- 
fore  many,  I  think  most,  of  the  Ibsenites 
praised  the  Ibsen  plays  merely  as  choses  vues, 
aesthetic  affirmations  of  what  can  be  without 
any  reference  to  what  ought  to  be.  Mr. 
•  William  Archer  himself  inclined  to  this  view, 
though  his  strong  sagacity  kept  him  in  a  haze 
of  healthy  doubt  on  the  subject.  J\Ir.  Walk- 
ley  certainly  took  this  view.  But  this  view 
Mr.  George  Bernard  Shaw  abruptly  and  vio- 
lently refused  to  take. 

With  the  full  Puritan  combination  of 
passion  and  precision  he  informed  everybody 
that  Ibsen  was  not  artistic,  but  moral;  that 
his  dramas  were  didactic,  that  all  great  art 
was  didactic,  that  Ibsen  was  strongly  on  the 
side  of  some  of  his  characters  and  strongly 
against  others,  that  there  was  preaching  and 
public  spirit  in  the  work  of  good  dramatists; 
and  that  if  this  were  not  so,  dramatists  and 
all  other  artists  would  be  mere  panders  of 
intellectual  debaucher)',  to  be  locked  up  as 
the  Puritans  locked  up  the  stage  players.  No 
one  can  understand  Bernard  Shaw  who  does 
not  give  full  value  to  this  early  revolt  of  his 
on  behalf  of  ethics  against  the  ruling  school 
of  Fart  pour  Fart.      It   is   interesting   because 

107 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


it  is  connected  with  other  ambitions  in  the 
man,  especially  with  that  which  has  made  him 
somewhat  vainer  of  being  a  Parish  Councillor 
than  of  being  one  of  the  most  popular 
dramatists  in  Europe.  But  its  chief  interest 
is  again  to  be  referred  to  our  stratification 
of  the  pyschology;  it  is  the  lover  of  true 
things  rebelling  for  once  against  merely  new 
things;  it  is  the  Puritan  suddenly  refusing 
to  be  the  mere  Progressive. 

But  this  attitude  obviously  laid  on  the 
ethical  lover  of  Ibsen  a  not  inconsiderable 
obligation.  If  the  new  drama  had  an  ethical 
purpose,  what  was  it  ^  and  if  Ibsen  was  a 
moral  teacher,  what  the  deuce  was  he  teach- 
ing ?  Answers  to  this  question,  answers  of 
manifold  brilliancy  and  promise,  were  scattered 
through  all  the  dramatic  criticisms  of  those 
years  on  the  Saturday  Review.  But  even 
Bernard  Shaw  grew  tired  after  a  time  of  dis- 
cussing Ibsen  only  in  connection  with  the 
current  pantomime  or  the  latest  musical 
comedy.  It  was  felt  that  so  much  sincerity 
and  fertility  of  explanation  justified  a  con- 
centrated attack;  and  in  1891  appeared  the 
brilliant  book  called  The  Quintessence  of 
Ibsenism,  which  some  have  declared  to  be 
merely   the   quintessence   of  Shaw.      However 

108 


The  Critic 

this  may  be,  it  was  in  fact  and  profession  / 
the  quintessence  of  Shaw's  theory  of  the  / 
moraHty  or  propaganda  of  Ibsen.  i 

The  book  itseh'  is  much  longer  than  the 
book  that  I  am  writing;  and  as  is  only  right 
in  so  spirited  an  apologist,  every  paragraph  is 
provocative.  I  could  write  an  essay  on  every 
sentence  which  I  accept  and  three  essays  on 
every  sentence  which  I  deny.  Bernard  Shaw 
himself  is  a  master  of  compression;  he  can 
put  a  conception  more  compactly  than  any 
other  man  alive.  It  is  therefore  rather 
difficult  to  compress  his  compression;  one 
feels  as  If  one  were  trying  to  extract  a  beef 
essence  from  Bovril.  But  the  shortest  form 
in  which  I  can  state  the  idea  of  The  Quin- 
tessence of  Ihsemsm  is  that  it  Is  the  idea  of 
distrusting  ideals,  which  are  universal.  In  com- 
parison with  facts,  which  are  miscellaneous. 
The  man  whom  he  attacks  throughout  he 
calls  "The  Idealist";  that  is  the  man  who 
permits  himself  to  be  mainly  moved  by  a 
moral  generalisation.  "Actions,"  he  says, 
"are  to  be  judged  by  their  effect  on  happi-  j 
ness,  and  not  by  their  conformity  to  any 
ideal."  As  we  have  already  seen,  there  is  a 
certain  inconsistency  here;  for  while  Shaw 
had   always   chucked   all  ideals   overboard   the 

109 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


one  he  had  chucked  first  was  the  ideal  of 
happiness.  Passing  this  however  for  tHe 
present,  we  may  mark  the  above  as  the  most 
satisfying  summary.  If  I  tell  a  lie  I  am  not 
to  blame  myself  for  having  violated  the  ideal 
of  truth,  but  only  for  having  perhaps  got 
myself  into  a  mess  and  made  things  worse 
than  they  were  before.  If  I  have  broken  my 
word  I  need  not  feel  (as  my  fathers  did)  that 
I  have  broken  something  inside  of  me,  as  one 
who  breaks  a  blood  vessel.  It  all  depends  on 
whether  I  have  broken  up  something  outside 
me;  as  one  who  breaks  up  an  evening  party. 
If  I  shoot  my  father  the  only  question  is 
whether  I  have  made  him  happy.  I  must 
not  admit  the  ideaHstic  conception  that  the 
mere  shooting  of  my  father  might  possibly 
make  me  unhappy.  We  are  to  judge  of 
every  individual  case  as  it  arises,  apparently 
without  any  social  summary  or  moral  ready- 
reckoner  at  all.  "The  Golden  Rule  is  that 
there  is  no  Golden  Rule."  We  must  not 
say  that  it  is  right  to  keep  promises,  but 
that  it  may  be  right  to  keep  this  promise. 
Essentially  it  is  anarchy;  nor  is  it  very  easy 
to  see  how  a  state  could  be  very  comfort- 
able which  was  Socialist  in  all  its  public 
morality    and    Anarchist    in    all    its    private. 

no 


The  Critic 

But  if  it  is  anarchy,  it  is  anarchy  without 
any  of  the  abandon  and  exuberance  of  anarchy. 
It  is  a  worried  and  conscientious  anarchy;  an 
anarchy  of  painful  delicacy  and  even  caution. 
For  it  refuses  to  trust  in  traditional  experi- 
ments or  plainly  trodden  tracks;  every  case 
must  be  considered  anew  from  the  beginning, 
and  yet  considered  w4th  the  most  wide-eyed 
care  for  human  welfare;  every  man  must  act 
as  if  he  were  the  first  man  made.  Briefly, 
we  must  always  be  worrying  about  what  is 
best  for  our  children,  and  we  must  not  take 
one  hint  or  rule  of  thumb  from  our  fathers. 
Some  think  that  this  anarchism  would  make 
a  man  tread  down  mighty  cities  in  his  mad- 
ness. I  think  it  would  make  a  man  walk 
down  the  street  as  if  he  were  walking  on  egg- 
shells. I  do  not  think  this  experiment  in 
opportunism  would  end  in  frantic  license;  I 
think  it  would  end  in  frozen  timidity.  If  a 
man  was  forbidden  to  solve  moral  problems 
by  moral  science  or  the  help  of  mankind,  his 
course  would  be  quite  easy — he  would  not 
solve  the  problems.  The  world  instead  of 
being  a  knot  so  tangled  as  to  need  unravel- 
ling, would  simply  become  a  piece  of  clock- 
work too  complicated  to  be  touched.  I  cannot 
think    that    this    untutored    worry    was    what 

III 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


Ibsen  meant;  I  have  my  doubts  as  to  whether 
it  was  what  Shaw  meant;  but  I  do  not  think 
that  it  can  be  substantially  doubted  that  it  was 
what  he  said. 

In  any  case  it  can  be  asserted  that  the 
general  aim  of  the  work  was  to  exalt  the 
immediate  conclusions  of  practice  against 
the  general  conclusions  of  theory.  Shaw 
objected  to  the  solution  of  every  problem  in 
a  play  being  by  its  nature  a  general  solution, 
applicable  to  all  other  such  problems.  He 
disliked  the  entrance  of  a  universal  justice  at 
the  end  of  the  last  act;  treading  down  all  the 
personal  ultimatums  and  all  the  varied  cer- 
tainties of  men.  He  disliked  the  god  from 
the  machine — because  he  was  from  a  machine. 
But  even  without  the  machine  he  tended  to 
dislike  the  god;  because  a  god  is  more  general 
than  a  man.  His  enemies  have  accused  Shaw 
of  being  anti-domestic,  a  shaker  of  the  roof- 
tree.  But  in  this  sense  Shaw  may  be  called 
almost  madly  domestic.  He  wishes  each  pri- 
vate problem  to  be  settled  in  private,  without 
reference  to  sociological  ethics.  And  the  only 
objection  to  this  kind  of  gigantic  casuistry  is 
that  the  theatre  is  really  too  small  to  discuss 
it.  It  would  not  be  fair  to  play  David  and 
Goliath  on  a  stage  too  small  to  admit  Goliath. 

112 


The  Critic 

And  it  Is  not  fair  to  discuss  private  morality 
on  a  stage  too  small  to  admit  the  enormous 
presence  of  public  morality;  that  character 
which  has  not  appeared  in  a  play  since  the 
Middle  Ages;  whose  name  is  Every-man  and 
whose  honour  we  have  all  in  our  keeping. 


H 


in 


The  Dramatist 


N^O  one  who  was   alive  at  the   time 
and     interested     in     such     matters 
will    ever    forget    the    first     acting 
of   Arms    and    the    Man.     It    was 
applauded    by    that    indescribable    element    in 
all   of  us   which    rejoices   to    see   the    genuine  ' 
thing   prevail   against   the   plausible;   that   ele- 
ment which  rejoices  that  even  its  enemies  are 
alive.     Apart  from  the  problems  raised  in  the  j 
play,   the   very    form    of  it   was    an    attractive/ 
and  forcible  innovation.     Classic  plays  which, 
were   wholly   heroic,    comic   plays   which   were' 
wholly    and     even    heartlessly    ironical,    were 
common     enough.       Commonest  of  all  in  this 
particular  time  was  the  play  that  began  play- 
fully, with  plenty  of  comic  business,  and  was 
gradually  sobered  by  sentiment  until  it  ended 
on  a  note  of  romance  or  even  of  pathos.     A 
commonplace    little    officer,    the    butt    of   the 
mess,    becomes   by   the   last   act   as   high    and 
hopeless  a  lover  as  Dante.     Or  a  vulgar  and 
violent  pork-butcher  remembers  his  own  youth 
before  the  curtain  goes  down.     The  first  thing 
that  Bernard  Shaw  did  when  he  stepped  before 

114 


The  Drmnatist 


the  footlights  was  to  reverse  this  process.  He 
resolved  to  build  a  play  not  on  pathos,  but  on 
bathos.  The  officer  should  be  heroic  first 
and  then  ever}'one  should  laugh  at  him;  the 
curtain  should  go  up  on  a  man  remembering 
his  youth,  and  he  should  only  reveal  himself 
as  a  violent  pork-butcher  when  someone  in- 
terrupted him  with  an  order  for  pork.  This 
merely  technical  originality  is  indicated  in  the 
very  title  of  the  play.  The  Arma  Virumque 
of  Virgil  is  a  mounting  and  ascending  phrase, 
the  man  is  more  than  his  weapons.  The  Latin 
line  suggests  a  superb  procession  which  should 
bring  on  to  the  stage  the  brazen  and  resound- 
ing armour,  the  shield  and  shattering  axe,  but 
end  with  the  hero  himself,  taller  and  more 
terrible  because  unarmed.  The  technical  effect 
of  Shaw's  scheme  is  like  the  same  scene, 
in  which  a  crowd  should  carry  even  more 
gigantic  shapes  of  shield  and  helmet,  but  when 
the  horns  and  howls  were  at  their  highest, 
should  end  with  the  figure  of  Little  Tich. 
The  name  itself  is  meant  to  be  a  bathos; 
arms — and  the  man. 

It  is  well  to  begin  with  the  superficial;  and 
this  is  the  superficial  effectiveness  of  Shaw; 
the  brilliancy  of  bathos.  But  of  course  the 
vitality    and    value   of  his    plays    does    not   lie 

"5 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


merely  in  this;  any  more  than  the  value  of 
Swinburne  lies  in  alliteration  or  the  value  of 
Hood  in  puns.  This  is  not  his  message;  but 
it  is  his  method;  it  is  his  style.  The  first 
taste  we  had  of  it  was  in  this  play  of  Arms  and 
the  Man;  but  even  at  the  very  first  it  was 
evident  that  there  was  much  more  in  the  play 
than  that.  Among  other  things  there  was  one 
thing  not  unimportant;  there  was  savage 
,  sincerity.  Indeed,  only  a  ferociously  sincere 
/  person  can  produce  such  effective  flippancies 
on  a  matter  Hke  war;  just  as  only  a  strong 
man  could  juggle  with  cannon  balls.  It  is  all 
very  well  to  use  the  word  "fool"  as  synony- 
mous with  "jester";  but  daily  experience 
shows  that  it  is  generally  the  solemn  and 
silent  man  who  is  the  fool.  It  is  all  very  well 
to  accuse  Mr.  Shaw  of  standing  on  his  head; 
but  if  you  stand  on  your  head  you  must  have 
a  hard  and  solid  head  to  stand  on.  In  Arms 
and  the  Man  the  bathos  of  form  was  strictly 
the  incarnation  of  a  strong  satire  in  the  idea. 
The  play  opens  in  an  atmosphere  of  mihtary 
melodrama;  the  dashing  officer  of  cavalry 
going  off  to  death  in  an  attitude,  the  lovely 
heroine  left  in  tearful  rapture;  the  brass  band, 
the  noise  of  guns  and  the  red  fire.  Into  all  this 
enters  Bluntschli,  the  little  sturdy  crop-haired 

ii6 


The  Dramatist 


Swiss  professional  soldier,  a  man  without  a 
country  but  w^th  a  trade.  He  tells  the  army- 
adoring'heroine  frankly  that  she  is  a  humbug; 
and  she,  after  a  moment's  reflection,  appears 
to  agree  with  him.  The  play  is  like  nearly 
all  Shaw's  plays,  the  dialogue  of  a  conversion. 
By  the  end  of  it  the  young  lady  has  lost  all 
her  military  illusions  and  admires  this  mer- 
cenary soldier  not  because  he  faces  guns,  but 
because  he  faces  facts. 

This  was  a  fitting  entrance  for  Shaw  to  his 
didactic  drama;  because  the  commonplace 
courage  which  he  respects  in  Bluntschli  was  the 
one  virtue  w^hich  he  was  destined  to  praise 
throughout.  We  can  best  see  how  the  play 
symbolises  and  summarises  Bernard  Shaw  if  we 
compare  it  with  some  other  attack  by  modern 
humanitarians  upon  war.  Shaw  has  many  of 
the  actual  opinions  of  Tolstoy.  Like  Tolstoy 
he  tells  men,  with  coarse  innocence,  that 
romantic  war  is  only  butchery  and  that  roman- 
tic love  is  only  lust.  But  Tolstoy  objects  to 
these  things  because  they  are  real;  he  really 
washes  to  abolish  them.  Shaw  only  objects  to 
them  in  so  far  as  they  are  ideal;  that  is  in  so 
far  as  they  are  idealised.  Shaw  objects  not  so 
much  to  war  as  to  the  attractiveness  of  war. 
He  does  not  so  much  dislike  love  as  the  love 

117 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


.of  love.     Before  the  temple  of  Mars,  Tolstoy 
stands  and  thunders,  "There  shall  be  no  wars"; 
Bernard  Shaw  merely  murmurs,  "Wars  if  you 
must;    but   for   God's    sake,    not   war   songs." 
Before    the    temple    of    Venus,    Tolstoy    cries 
terribly,   "Come   out    of   it!";   Shaw    is    quite 
content  to  say,  "Do  not  be  taken  in  by  it." 
Tolstoy    seems    really    to    propose    that    high 
passion  and  patriotic  valour  should  be  destroyed. 
Shaw  is   more   mioderate;   and   only   asks   that 
they   should   be   desecrated.      Upon   this   note, 
both  about  sex  and  conflict,  he  was  destined  to 
dwell  through  much  of  his  work  with  the  most 
wonderful   variations    of  witty    adventure    and 
intellectual  surprise.     It  may  be  doubted  per- 
haps whether  this  realism  in  love  and  war  is 
quite  so  sensible  as  it  looks.      Securus   judicat 
orhis   terrarum;   the   world    is   wiser   than    the 
moderns.    The  world  has  kept  sentimentalities 
simply    because    they    are    the    most    practical 
things  in  the  world.     They  alone  make  men 
do  things.     The  world   does  not  encourage  a 
quite  rational  lover,  simply  because  a  perfectly 
rational  lover  would  never  get  married.     The 
world  does  not  encourage  a  perfectly  rational 
army,  because  a  perfectly  rational  army  would 
run  away. 
The  brain  of  Bernard  Shaw  was  like  a  wedge 

ii8 


The  Dramatist 


in  the  literal  sense.  Its  sharpest  end  was 
always  in  front;  and  it  split  our  society  from 
end  to  end  the  moment  it  had  entrance  at  all. 
As  I  have  said  he  was  long  unheard  of;  but 
he  had  not  the  tragedy  of  many  authors,  who 
were  heard  of  long  before  they  were  heard. 
When  you  had  read  any  Shaw  you  read  all 
Shaw.  When  you  had  seen  one  of  his  plays  you 
waited  for  more.  And  when  he  brought  them 
out  in  volume  form,  you  did  what  is  repugnant 
to  any  literary  man — you  bought  a  book. 

The  dramatic  volume  with  which  Shaw 
dazzled  the  public  was  called,  Plays,  Pleasant 
and  Unpleasant.  I  think  the  most  striking 
and  typical  thing  about  it  was  that  he  did  not 
know  very  clearly  which  plays  were  unpleasant 
and  which  were  pleasant.  "  Pleasant"  is  a  word 
which  is  almost  unmeaning  to  Bernard  Shaw. 
Except,  as  I  suppose,  in  music  (where  I  cannot 
follow  him),  relish  and  receptivity  are  things 
that  simply  do  not  appear.  He  has  the  best 
of  tongues  and  the  worst  of  palates.  With  the 
possible  exception  of  Mrs.  Warren  s  Profession 
(which  was  at  least  unpleasant  in  the  sense 
of  being  forbidden)  I  can  see  no  particular 
reason  why  any  of  the  seven  plays  should  be 
held  specially  to  please  or  displease.  First  in 
fame  and  contemporary  importance  came  the 

119 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


reprint  of  Arms  and  the  Man,  of  which  I  have 
already  spoken.  Over  all  the  rest  towered  un- 
questionably the  two  figures  of  Mrs.  Warren 
and  of  Candida.  They  were  neither  of  them 
pleasant,  except  as  all  good  art  is  pleasant. 
They  were  neither  of  them  really  unpleasant 
except  as  all  truth  is  unpleasant.  But  they  did 
represent  the  author's  normal  preference  and 
his  principal  fear;  and  those  two  sculptured 
giantesses  largely  upheld  his  fame. 

I  fancy  that  the  author  rather  dislikes 
Candida  because  it  is  so  generally  liked.  I  give 
my  own  feeling  for  what  it  is  worth  (a  foolish 
phrase),  but  I  think  that  there  were  only  two 
moments  when  this  powerful  writer  was  truly, 
in  the  ancient  and  popular  sense,  inspired; 
that  is,  breathing  from  a  bigger  self  and  telling 
more  truth  than  he  knew.  One  is  that  scene 
in  a  later  play  where  after  the  secrets  and 
revenges  of  Egypt  have  rioted  and  rotted  all 
round  him,  the  colossal  sanity  of  Caesar  is 
suddenly  acclaimed  with  swords.  The  other 
is  that  great  last  scene  in  Candida  where  the 
wife,  stung  into  final  speech,  declared  her  pur- 
pose of  remaining  with  the  strong  man  because 
he  is  the  weak  man.  The  wife  is  asked  to 
decide  between  two  men,  one  a  strenuous  self- 
confident  popular  preacher,  her  husband,  the 

120 


The  Dramatist 


other  a  wild   and  weak  young  poet,   logically 
futile  and  physically  timid,  her  lover;  and  she 
chooses  the  former  because  he  has  more  weak- 
ness and  more  need  of  her.     Even  among  the 
plain  and  ringing  paradoxes  of  the  Shaw  play 
this  is  one  of  the  best  reversals  or  turnovers 
ever  effected.     A  paradoxical  writer  like  Ber- 
nard Shaw  is  perpetually  and  tiresomely  told 
that  he  stands  on  his  head.     But  all  romance 
and   all   religion   consist  in   making  the  whole 
universe  stand  on  its  head.     That  reversal  is 
the  whole  idea  of  virtue;  that  the   last  shall 
be  first  and  the  first  last.      Considered   as   a 
pure  piece  of  Shaw  therefore,  the  thing  is  of 
the    best.      But    it    is    also    something    much 
better  than  Shaw.     The  writer  touches  certain 
realities   commonly   outside   his   scope;   especi- 
ally the  reality  of  the  normal  wife's  attitude  to 
the  normal  husband,  an  attitude  which  is  not 
romantic    but    which    is    yet    quite    quixotic; 
which  is  insanely  unselfish  and  yet  quite  cynic- 
ally clear-sighted.     It  involves  human  sacrifice 
without  in  the  least  involving  idolatry. 

The  truth  is  that  in  this  place  Bernard 
Shaw  comes  within  an  inch  of  expressing 
something  that  is  not  properly  expressed  any- 
where else;  the  idea  of  marriage.  Marriage 
is  not  a  mere  chain  upon  love  as  the  anarchists 

121 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


say;  nor  is  it  a  mere  crown  upon  love  as  the 
sentimentalists  say.  Marriage  is  a  fact,  an 
actual  human  relation  like  that  of  motherhood 
which  has  certain  human  habits  and  loyalties, 
except  in  a  few  monstrous  cases  where  it  is 
turned  to  torture  by  special  insanity  and  sin. 
A  marriage  is  neither  an  ecstasy  nor  a  slavery; 
it  is  a  commonwealth;  it  is  a  separate  working 
and  fighting  thing  Hke  a  nation.  Kings  and 
diplomatists  talk  of  "forming  alliances"  when 
they  make  weddings;  but  indeed  every  wed- 
ding is  primarily  an  alliance.  The  family  is  a 
fact  even  when  it  is  not  an  agreeable  fact,  and 
a  man  is  part  of  his  wife  even  when  he  wishes 
he  wasn't.  The  twain  are  one  flesh — yes, 
even  when  they  are  not  one  spirit.  Man  is 
duplex.    Man  is  a  quadruped. 

Of  this  ancient  and  essential  relation  there 
are  certain  emotional  results,  which  are  subtle, 
like  all  the  growths  of  nature.  And  one  of 
them  is  the  attitude  of  the  wife  to  the  husband, 
whom  she  regards  at  once  as  the  strongest  and 
most  helpless  of  human  figures.  She  regards 
him  in  some  strange  fashion  at  once  as  a 
warrior  who  must  make  his  way  and  as  an 
infant  who  is  sure  to  lose  his  way.  The  man 
has  emotions  which  exactly  correspond;  some- 
times looking  down  at  his  wife  and  sometimes 

122 


The  Dramatist 


up  at  her;  for  marriage  is  like  a  splendid 
game  of  see-saw.  Whatever  else  it  is,  it  is 
not  comradeship.  This  living,  ancestral  bond 
(not  of  love  or  fear,  but  strictly  of  marriage) 
has  been  twice  expressed  splendidly  in  litera- 
ture. The  man's  incurable  sense  of  the 
mother  in  his  lawful  wife  was  uttered  by 
Browning  in  one  of  his  two  or  three  truly 
shattering  lines  of  genius,  when  he  makes  the 
execrable  Guido  fall  back  finally  upon  the  fact 
of  marriage  and  the  wife  whom  he  has  trodden 
like  mire: 

"Christ!   Mada!   God, 
Pompilia,  will  you  let  them  murder  me  ?" 

And  the  woman's  witness  to  the  same  fact 
has  been  best  expressed  by  Bernard  Shaw  in 
this  great  scene  where  she  remains  with  the 
great  stalwart  successful  public  man  because 
he  is  really  too  little  to  run  alone. 

There  are  one  or  two  errors  in  the  play; 
and  they  are  all  due  to  the  primary  error  of 
despising  the  mental  attitude  of  romance,  which 
is  the  only  key  to  real  human  conduct.  For 
instance,  the  love  making  of  the  young  poet  is 
all  wrong.  He  is  supposed  to  be  a  romantic 
and  amorous  boy;  and  therefore  the  dramatist 
tries  to  make  him  talk  turgidly,  about  seeking 

123 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


for  "an  archangel  with  purple  wings"  who 
shall  be  worthy  of  his  lady.  But  a  lad  in  love 
would  never  talk  in  this  mock  heroic  style; 
there  is  no  period  at  which  the  young  male  is 
more  sensitive  and  serious  and  afraid  of  look- 
ing a  fool.  This  is  a  blunder;  but  there  is 
another  much  bigger  and  blacker.  It  is  com- 
pletely and  disastrously  false  to  the  whole 
nature  of  falling  in  love  to  make  the  young 
Eugene  complain  of  the  cruelty  which  makes 
Candida  defile  her  fair  hands  with  domestic 
duties.  No  boy  in  love  with  a  beautiful 
woman  would  ever  feel  disgusted  when  she 
peeled  potatoes  or  trimmed  lamps.  He  would 
like  her  to  be  domestic.  He  would  simply 
feel  that  the  potatoes  had  become  poetical  and 
the  lamps  gained  an  extra  light.  This  may  be 
irrational;  but  we  are  not  talking  of  ration- 
ality, but  of  the  psychology  of  first  love.  It 
may  be  very  unfair  to  women  that  the  toil 
and  triviality  of  potato  peeling  should  be  seen 
through  a  glamour  of  romance;  but  the 
glamour  is  quite  as  certain  a  fact  as  the 
potatoes.  It  may  be  a  bad  thing  in  sociology 
that  men  should  deify  domesticity  in  girls  as 
something  dainty  and  magical;  but  all  men 
do.  Personally  I  do  not  think  it  a  bad  thing 
at   all;    but   that   is    another   argument.      The 

124 


The  Dramatist 


argument  here  is  that  Bernard  Shaw,  in  aim- 
ing at  mere  realism,  makes  a  big  mistake  in 
reality.  Misled  by  his  great  heresy  of  looking 
at  emotions  from  the  outside,  he  makes  Eu- 
gene a  cold-blooded  prig  at  the  very  moment 
when  he  is  tr)'ing,  for  his  own  dramatic  pur- 
poses, to  make  him  a  hot-blooded  lover. 
He  makes  the  young  lover  an  idealistic  the- 
oriser  about  the  very  things  about  which  he 
really  would  have  been  a  sort  of  mystical 
materialist.  Here  the  romantic  Irishman  is 
much  more  right  than  the  very  rational  one; 
and  there  is  far  more  truth  to  life  as  it  is 
in  Lover's  couplet — 

"And  envied  the  chicken 
That  Peggy  was  pickin'.** 

than  in  Eugene's  solemn,  aesthetic  protest 
against  the  potato-skins  and  the  lamp-oil. 
For  dramatic  purposes,  G.  B.  S.,  even  if  he 
despises  romance,  ought  to  comprehend  it. 
But  then,  if  once  he  comprehended  romance, 
he  would  not  despise  it. 

The  series  contained,  besides  its  more  sub- 
stantial work,  tragic  and  comic,  a  compara- 
tive frivolity  called  The  Man  of  Destiny.  It 
is  a  little  comedy  about  Napoleon,  and  is 
chiefly   interesting   as   a    foreshadowing   of  his 

125 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


after  sketches  of  heroes  and  strong  men;  it 
is  a  kind  of  parody  of  Ccesar  and  Cleopatra 
before  it  was  written.  In  this  connection 
the  mere  title  of  this  Napoleonic  play  is  of 
interest.  All  Shaw's  generation  and  school  of 
thought  remembered  Napoleon  only  by  his 
late  and  corrupt  title  of  "The  Man  of 
Destiny/'  a  title  only  given  to  him  when  he 
was  already  fat  and  tired  and  destined  to  exile. 
They  forgot  that  through  all  the  really  thrill- 
ing and  creative  part  of  his  career  he  was  not 
the  man  of  destiny,  but  the  man  who  defied 
destiny.  Shaw's  sketch  is  extraordinarily 
clever;  but  it  is  tinged  with  this  unmilitary 
notion  of  an  inevitable  conquest;  and  this  wx 
must  remember  when  we  come  to  those  larger 
canvases  on  which  he  painted  his  more  serious 
heroes.  As  for  the  play,  it  is  packed  with 
good  things,  of  which  the  last  is  perhaps  the 
best.  The  long  duologue  between  Bonaparte 
and  the  Irish  lady  ends  with  the  General 
declaring  that  he  will  only  be  beaten  when 
he  meets  an  English  army  under  an  Irish 
general.  It  has  always  been  one  of  Shaw's 
paradoxes  that  the  English  mind  has  the  force  to 
fulfil  orders,  while  the  Irish  mind  has  the  intel- 
ligence to  give  them,  and  it  is  among  those 
of  his  paradoxes  which  contain  a  certain  truth. 

126 


The  Dramatist 


A  far  more  important  play  is  The  Philanderer, 
an  ironic  comedy  which  is  full  of  fine  strokes 
and  real  satire;  it  is  more  especially  the 
vehicle  of  some  of  Shaw's  best  satire  upon 
physical  science.  Nothing  could  be  cleverer 
than  the  picture  of  the  young,  strenuous 
doctor,  in  the  utter  innocence  of  his  profes- 
sional ambition,  who  has  discovered  a  new 
disease,  and  is  delighted  when  he  finds  people 
suffering  from  it  and  cast  down  to  despair 
when  he  finds  that  it  does  not  exist.  The 
point  is  worth  a  pause,  because  it  is  a  good, 
short  way  of  stating  Shaw's  attitude,  right  or 
wrong,  upon  the  whole  of  formal  morality. 
What  he  dislikes  in  young  Doctor  Paramore 
is  that  he  has  interposed  a  secondary  and  false 
conscience  betvv^een  himself  and  the  facts. 
When  his  disease  is  disproved,  instead  of 
seeing  the  escape  of  a  human  being  who 
thought  he  was  going  to  die  of  it,  Paramore 
sees  the  downfall  of  a  kind  of  flag  or  cause. 
This  is  the  whole  contention  of  The  Quin- 
tessence  of  Ibsenism,  put  better  than  the  book 
puts  it;  it  is  a  really  sharp  exposition  of  the 
dangers  of  "idealism,"  the  sacrifice  of  people 
to  principles,  and  Shaw  is  even  wiser  in  his 
suggestion  that  this  excessive  idealism  exists 
nowhere     so     strongly     as     in     the    world    of 

127 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


physical  science.  He  shows  that  the  scientist 
tends  to  be  more  concerned  about  the  sickness 
than  about  the  sick  man;  but  it  was  certainly 
in  his  mind  to  suggest  here  also  that  the 
idealist  is  more  concerned  about  the  sin  than 
about  the  sinner. 

This  business  of  Dr.  Paramore's  disease 
while  it  is  the  most  farcical  thing  in  the  play 
is  also  the  most  philosophic  and  important. 
The  rest  of  the  figures,  including  the  Philan- 
derer himself,  are  in  the  full  sense  of  those 
blasting  and  obliterating  words  "funny  with- 
out being  vulgar,"  that  is,  funny  without 
being  of  any  importance  to  the  masses  of 
men.  It  is  a  play  about  a  dashing  and  ad- 
vanced "Ibsen  Club,"  and  the  squabble 
between  the  young  Ibsenites  and  the  old 
people  who  are  not  yet  up  to  Ibsen.  It 
would  be  hard  to  find  a  stronger  example  of 
Shaw's  only  essential  error,  modernity — 
which  means  the  seeking  for  truth  in  terms 
of  time.  Only  a  few  years  have  passed  and 
already  almost  half  the  wit  of  that  wonderful 
play  is  wasted,  because  it  all  turns  on  the 
newness  of  a  fashion  that  is  no  longer  new. 
Doubtless  many  people  still  think  the  Ibsen 
drama  a  great  thing,  like  the  French  classical 
drama.     But  going  to  "  The  Philanderer"  is  like 

128 


The  Dramatist 


going  among  periwigs  and  rapiers  and  hearing 
that  the  young  men  are  now  all  for  Racine. 
What  makes  such  work  sound  unreal  is  not  the 
praise  of  Ibsen,  but  the  praise  of  the  novelty 
of  Ibsen.  Any  advantage  that  Bernard  Shaw 
had  over  Colonel  Craven  I  have  over  Bernard 
Shaw;  we  who  happen  to  be  born  last  have 
the  meaningless  and  paltry  triumph  in  that 
meaningless  and  paltr}'  war.  W  e  are  the 
superiors  by  that  silliest  and  most  snobbish 
of  all  superiorities,  the  mere  aristocracy  of 
time.  All  works  must  become  thus  old  and 
insipid  which  have  ever  tried  to  be  '^modern," 
which  have  consented  to  smell  of  time  rather 
than  of  eternity.  Only  those  who  have 
stooped  to  be  in  advance  of  their  time  will 
ever  find  themselves  behind  it. 

But  it  is  irritating  to  think  what  diamonds, 
what  dazzling  silver  of  Shavian  wit  has  been 
sunk  in  such  an  out-of-date  warship.  In  The 
Philanderer  there  are  five  hundred  excellent 
and  about  five  magnificent  things.  The  rattle 
of  repartees  bet^veen  the  doctor  and  the 
soldier  about  the  humanity  of  their  two  trades 
is  admirable.  Or  again,  when  the  colonel  tells 
Chartaris  that  ''in  his  young  days"  he  would 
have  no  more  behaved  like  Chartaris  than  he 
would  have  cheated  at  cards.     After  a   pause 

I  i2g 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


Chartaris  says,  "You're  getting  old,  Craven, 
and  you  make  a  virtue  of  it  as  usual."  And 
there  is  an  altitude  of  aerial  tragedy  in  the 
words  of  Grace,  who  has  refused  the  man  she 
loves,  to  Julia,  who  is  marrying  the  man 
she  doesn't,  "This  is  what  they  call  a  happy 
ending — these  men." 

There  is  an  acrid  taste  in  The  Philanderer; 
and  certainly  he  might  be  considered  a  super- 
sensitive person  who  should  find  anything  acrid 
in  Tou  Never  Can  Tell.    This  play  is  the  nearest 
approach  to  frank  and  objectless  exuberance  in 
the  whole  of  Shaw's  work.    Punchy  with  wisdom 
as  well  as  wit,  said  that  it  might  well  be  called 
not  "You  Never  Can  Tell"  but  "You  Never 
Can  be  Shaw."    And  yet  if  anyone  will  read  this 
blazing  farce  and  then  after  it  any  of  the  romantic 
farces,  such  as  Pickwick  or  even  The  Wrong  Box, 
I  do  not  think  he  will  be  disposed  to  erase  or  even 
to  modify  what  I  said  at  the  beginning  about 
the   ingrained   grimness   and   even   inhumanity 
of  Shaw's  art.     To  take  but  one  test:  love,  in 
an  "extravaganza,"  may  be  hght  love  or  love 
in  idleness,  but  it  should  be  hearty  and  happy 
love   if  it   is   to   add   to   the   general    hilarity. 
Such  are  the  ludicrous  but  lucky  love  affairs  of 
the  sportsman  Winkle  and  the  Maestro  Jimson. 
In  Gloria's  collapse  before  her  bullying  lover 

130 


The  Dramatist 


there  is  something  at  once  cold  and  unclean; 
it  calls  up  all  the  modern  supermen  with  their 
cruel  and  fishy  eyes.  Such  farces  should  begin 
in  a  friendly  air,  in  a  tavern.  There  is  some- 
thing very  symbolic  of  Shaw  in  the  fact  that 
his  farce  begins  in  a  dentist's. 

The  only  one  out  of  this  brilliant  batch  of 
plays  in  which  I  think  that  the  method  adopted 
really  fails,  is  the  one  called  Widoivers 
Houses.  The  best  touch  of  Shaw  is  simply 
in  the  title.  The  simple  substitution  of 
widowers  for  widows  contains  almost  the 
whole  bitter  and  yet  boisterous  protest  of 
Shaw;  all  his  preference  for  undignified  fact 
over  dignified  phrase;  all  his  dislike  of  those 
subtle  trends  of  sex  or  mystery  which  swing 
the  logician  off  the  straight  line.  We  can 
imagine  him  crying,  "Why  in  the  name  of 
death  and  conscience  should  it  be  tragic  to  be 
a  widow  but  comic  to  be  a  widower?"  But 
the  rationalistic  method  is  here  applied  quite 
wrong  as  regards  the  production  of  a  drama. 
The  most  dramatic  point  in  the  affair  is  when 
the  open  and  indecent  rack-renter  turns  on  the 
decent  young  man  of  means  and  proves  to  him 
that  he  is  equally  guilty,  that  he  also  can  only 
grind  his  corn  by  grinding  the  faces  of  the 
poor.     But  even  here  the  point  is  undramatic 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


because  it  is  indirect;  it  is  indirect  because  it 
is  merely  sociological.  It  may  be  the  truth 
that  a  young  man  living  on  an  unexamined 
income  which  ultimately  covers  a  great  deal  of 
house-property  is  as  dangerous  as  any  despot 
or  thief.  But  it  is  a  truth  that  you  can  no 
more  put  into  a  play  than  into  a  triolet.  You 
can  make  a  play  out  of  one  man  robbing 
another  man,  but  not  out  of  one  man  robbing 
a  million  men;  still  less  out  of  his  robbing 
them  unconsciously. 

Of  the  plays  collected  in  this  book  I  have 
kept  Mrs.  Warren  s  Profession  to  the  last, 
because,  fine  as  it  is,  it  is  even  finer  and  more 
important  because  of  its  fate,  v^hich  v^as  to 
rouse  a  long  and  serious  storm  and  to  be  vetoed 
by  the  Censor  of  Plays.  I  say  that  this  drama 
is  most  important  because  of  the  quarrel  that 
came  out  of  it.  If  I  v^ere  speaking  of  some 
mere  artist  this  might  be  an  insult.  But  there 
are  high  and  heroic  things  in  Bernard  Shaw; 
and  one  of  the  highest  and  most  heroic  is  this, 
that  he  certainly  cares  much  more  for  a  quarrel 
than  for  a  play.  And  this  quarrel  about  the 
censorship  is  one  on  which  he  feels  so  strongly 
that  in  a  book  embodying  any  sort  of  sympathy 
it  would  be  much  better  to  leave  out  Mrs. 
Warren  than  to  leave  out  Mr.  Redford.     The 

132 


The  Dramatist 


veto  was  the  pivot  of  so  very  personal  a 
movement  by  the  dramatist,  of  so  very  positive 
an  assertion  of  his  own  attitude  towards  things, 
that  it  is  only  just  and  necessary  to  state  what 
were  the  two  essential  parties  to  the  dispute; 
the  play  and  the  official  who  prevented  the 
play. 

The  play  of  Mri*.  Warren's  Profession  is  con- 
cerned with  a  coarse  mother  and  a  cold  daughter; 
the  mother  drives  the  ordinary  and  dirty  trade 
of  harlotry;  the  daughter  does  not  know  until 
the  end  the  atrocious  origin  of  all  her  own 
comfort  and  refinement.  The  daughter,  when 
the  discovery  is  made,  freezes  up  into  an  ice- 
berg of  contempt;  which  is  indeed  a  very 
womanly  thing  to  do.  The  mother  explodes 
into  pulverising  cynicism  and  practicality; 
which  is  also  very  womanly.  The  dialogue  is 
drastic  and  sweeping;  the  daughter  says  the 
trade  is  loathsome;  the  mother  answers  that 
she  loathes  it  herself;  that  every  healthy  per- 
son does  loathe  the  trade  by  which  she  lives. 
And  beyond  question  the  general  effect  of  the 
play  is  that  the  trade  is  loathsome;  supposing 
anyone  to  be  so  insensible  as  to  require  to  be 
told  of  the  fact.  Undoubtedly  the  upshot  is 
that  a  brothel  is  a  miserable  business,  and 
a    brothel-keeper    a    miserable    woman.      The 

^33 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


whole  dramatic  art  of  Shaw  is  in  the  literal 
sense  of  the  word,  tragi-comic;  I  mean  that 
the  comic  part  comes  after  the  tragedy.  But 
just  as  Tou  Never  Can  Tell  represents  the 
nearest  approach  of  Shaw  to  the  purely  comic, 
so  Mrs.  Warren^ s  Profession  represents  his  only 
complete,  or  nearly  complete,  tragedy.  There 
is  no  twopenny  modernism  in  it,  as  in  The 
Philanderer.  Mrs.  Warren  is  as  old  as  the  Old 
Testament;  "for  she  hath  cast  down  many 
wounded,  yea,  many  strong  men  have  been 
slain  by  her;  her  house  is  in  the  gates  of  hell, 
going  down  into  the  chamber  of  death."  Here 
is  no  subtle  ethics,  as  in  Widowers'  Houses;  for 
even  those  moderns  who  think  it  noble  that  a 
woman  should  throw  away  her  honour,  surely 
cannot  think  it  especially  noble  that  she  should 
sell  it.  Here  is  no  lighting  up  by  laughter, 
astonishment,  and  happy  coincidence,  as  in  Tou 
Never  Can  Tell.  The  play  is  a  pure  tragedy 
about  a  permanent  and  quite  plain  human 
problem;  the  problem  is  as  plain  and  perma- 
nent, the  tragedy  is  as  proud  and  pure,  as  in 
CEdipus  or  Macbeth.  This  play  was  presented 
in  the  ordinary  way  for  public  performance 
and  was  suddenly  stopped  by  the  Censor  of 
Plays. 

The   Censor  of  Plays   is   a   small  and   acci- 

134 


The  Dramatist 


dental  eighteenth-century  official.  Like  nearly 
all  the  powers  which  Englishmen  now  respect 
as  ancient  and  rooted,  he  is  very  recent. 
Novels  and  newspapers  still  talk  of  the  English 
aristocracy  that  came  over  with  William  the 
Conqueror.  Little  of  our  effective  oligarchy 
is  as  old  as  the  Reformation;  and  none  of  it 
came  over  with  William  the  Conqueror.  Some 
of  the  older  English  landlords  came  over  with 
William  of  Orange;  the  rest  have  come  by 
ordinar)^  alien  immigration.  In  the  same  way 
we  always  talk  of  the  Victorian  woman  (with 
her  smelling  salts  and  sentiment)  as  the  old- 
fashioned  woman.  But  she  really  was  a  quite 
new-fashioned  woman;  she  considered  herself, 
and  was,  an  advance  in  delicacy  and  civilisa- 
tion upon  the  coarse  and  candid  Elizabethan 
woman  to  whom  we  are  now  returning.  We 
are  never  oppressed  by  old  things;  it  is  recent 
things  that  can  really  oppress.  And  in  accord- 
ance with  this  principle  modern  England  has 
accepted,  as  if  it  were  a  part  of  perennial 
morality,  a  tenth-rate  job  of  Walpole's  w^orst 
days  called  the  Censorship  of  the  Drama.  Just 
as  they  have  supposed  the  eighteenth-century 
parvenus  to  date  from  Hastings,  just  as  they 
have  supposed  the  eighteenth-centur}^  ladies 
to  date  from  Eve,  so  they  have  supposed  the 

ns 


George  Bernard  SJiaw 


eighteenth-century    Censorship    to    date    from 
Sinai.     The  origin  of  the  thing  was  in  truth 
purely  political.    Its  first  and  principal  achieve- 
ment  was    to    prevent    Fielding    from   writing 
plays;  not  at  all  because  the  plays  were  coarse, 
but   because   they   criticised   the    Government. 
Fielding  was  a  free  writer;  but  they  did   not 
resent   his   sexual  freedom;  the   Censor  would 
not  have  objected  if  he  had  torn  away  the  most 
intimate   curtains  of  decency  or  rent  the  last 
rag  from  private  life.     What  the  Censor  dis- 
liked was  his  rending  the  curtain  from  public 
life.     There  is  still  much  of  that  spirit  in  our 
country;  there  are  no  affairs  which  men  seek 
so   much  to  cover  up   as  public   affairs.      But 
the    thing    was    done    somewhat    more    boldly 
and  baldly  in  Walpole's  day;  and  the  Censor- 
ship   of   plays    has    its    origin,    not    merely    in 
tyranny,  but  in  a  quite  trifling  and  temporary 
and  partisan  piece  of  tyranny;  a  thing  in  its 
nature  far  more  ephemeral,  far  less  essential, 
than  Ship  Money.    Perhaps  its  brightest  moment 
was  when  the  office  of  censor  was  held  by  that 
filthy  writer,   Colman  the  younger;  and  when 
he   gravely   refused   to   license   a  work   by  the 
author  of  Our   Village.      Few  funnier  notions 
can   ever   have   actually   been   facts   than   this 
notion  that  the  restraint  and  chastity  of  George 

136 


The  Dramatist 


Colman    saved    the    English    pubHc    from    the 
eroticism  and  obscenity  of  Miss  Mitford. 

Such  was  the  play;  and  such  was  the  power 
that  stopped  the  play.  A  private  man  wrote 
it;  another  private  man  forbade  it;  nor  was 
there  any  difference  between  Mr.  Shaw's  au- 
thority and  Mr.  Redford's,  except  that  Mr. 
Shaw  did  defend  his  action  on  public  grounds 
and  Mr.  Redford  did  not.  The  dramatist  had 
simply  been  suppressed  by  a  despot;  and  what 
was  worse  (because  it  was  modern)  by  a  silent 
and  evasive  despot;  a  despot  in  hiding. 
People  talk  about  the  pride  of  tyrants;  but 
we  at  the  present  day  suffer  from  the  modesty 
of  tyrants;  from  the  shyness  and  the  shrink- 
ing secrecy  of  the  strong.  Shaw's  preface  to 
Mrs.  Warren  s  Profession  was  far  more  fit  to  be 
called  a  public  document  than  the  slovenly 
refusal  of  the  individual  official;  it  had  more 
exactness,  more  universal  application,  more 
authority.  Shaw  on  Redford  was  far  more 
national  and  responsible  than  Redford  on 
Shaw. 

The  dramatist  found  in  the  quarrel  one  of 
the  important  occasions  of  his  life,  because 
the  crisis  called  out  somethino-  in  him  which  is 
in  many  ways  his  highest  quality — righteous 
indignation.     As  a  mere   matter  of  the  art  of 

^Z7 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


controversy  of  course  he  carried  the  war  into 
the  enemy's  camp  at  once.  He  did  not  linger 
over  loose  excuses  for  licence;  he  declared  at 
once  that  the  Censor  was  licentious,  while  he, 
Bernard  Shaw,  was  clean.  He  did  not  discuss 
whether  a  Censorship  ought  to  make  the 
drama  moral.  He  declared  that  it  made  the 
drama  immoral.  With  a  fine  strategic  audacity 
he  attacked  the  Censor  quite  as  much  for  what 
he  permitted  as  for  what  he  prevented.  He 
charged  him  with  encouraging  all  plays  that 
attracted  men  to  vice  and  only  stopping  those 
which  discouraged  them  from  it.  Nor  was 
this  attitude  by  any  means  an  idle  paradox. 
Many  plays  appear  (as  Shaw  pointed  out)  in 
which  the  prostitute  and  the  procuress  are 
practically  obvious,  and  in  which  they  are 
represented  as  revelling  in  beautiful  surround- 
ings and  basking  in  brilliant  popularity.  The 
crime  of  Shaw  was  not  that  he  introduced  the 
Gaiety  Girl;  that  had  been  done,  with  little 
enough  decorum,  in  a  hundred  musical  come- 
dies. The  crime  of  Shaw  was  that  he  intro- 
duced the  Gaiety  Girl,  but  did  not  represent 
her  life  as  all  gaiety.  The  pleasures  of  vice 
were  already  flaunted  before  the  playgoers. 
It  was  the  perils  of  vice  that  were  carefully 
concealed    from   them.      The   gay   adventures. 


The  Dramatist 


the  gorgeous  dresses,  the  champagne  and 
oysters,  the  diamonds  and  motor-cars,  drama- 
tists were  allowed  to  drag  all  these  dazzHng 
temptations  before  any  silly  housemaid  in  the 
gallery  who  was  grumbling  at  her  wages.  But 
they  were  not  allowed  to  warn  her  of  the  vul- 
garity and  the  nausea,  the  dreary  deceptions 
and  the  blasting  diseases  of  that  life.  Mrs. 
Warren  s  Profession  was  not  up  to  a  sufficient 
standard  of  immorality;  it  was  not  spicy 
enough  to  pass  the  Censor.  The  acceptable 
and  the  accepted  plays  were  those  which  made 
the  fall  of  a  woman  fashionable  and  fascinating; 
for  all  the  world  as  if  the  Censor's  profession 
were  the  same  as  Mrs.  Warren's  profession. 

Such  was  the  angle  of  Shaw's  energetic 
attack;  and  it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  there 
was  exaggeration  in  it,  and  what  is  so  much 
worse,  omission.  The  argument  might  easily 
be  carried  too  far;  it  might  end  with  a  scene 
of  screaming  torture  in  the  Inquisition  as  a 
corrective  to  the  too  amiable  view  of  a  clergy- 
man in  The  Private  Secretary.  But  the  con- 
troversy is  definitely  worth  recording,  if  only 
as  an  excellent  example  of  the  author's 
aggressive  attitude  and  his  love  of  turning 
the  tables  in  debate.  Moreover,  though  this 
point  of  view  involves    a   potential   overstate- 

139 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


ment,  it  also  involves  an  important  truth. 
One  of  the  best  points  urged  in  the  course  of 
it  v^as  this,  that  though  vice  is  punished  in 
conventional  drama,  the  punishment  is  not 
really  impressive,  because  it  is  not  inevit- 
able or  even  probable.  It  does  not  arise  out 
of  the  evil  act.  Years  afterwards  Bernard 
Shaw^  urged  this  argument  again  in  connec- 
tion v^ith  his  friend  Mr.  Granville  Barker's 
play  of  Waste,  in  which  the  woman  dies  from 
an  illegal  operation.  Bernard  Shaw  said,  truly 
enough,  that  if  she  had  died  from  poison  or  a 
pistol  shot  it  would  have  left  everyone  un- 
moved, for  pistols  do  not  in  their  nature 
follow  female  unchastity.  Illegal  operations 
very  often  do.  The  punishment  was  one 
which  might  follow  the  crime,  not  only  in 
that  case,  but  in  many  cases.  Here,  I  think, 
the  whole  argument  might  be  sufficiently 
cleared  up  by  saying  that  the  objection  to 
such  things  on  the  stage  is  a  purely  artistic 
objection.  There  is  nothing  wrong  in  talk- 
ing about  an  illegal  operation;  there  are 
plenty  of  occasions  when  it  would  be  very 
wrong  not  to  talk  about  it.  But  it  may 
easily  be  just  a  shade  too  ugly  for  the  shape 
of  any  work  of  art.  There  is  nothing  wrong 
about  being  sick;  but  if  Bernard  Shaw  wrote 

140 


The  Dramatist 


a  play  in  which  all  the  characters  expressed 
their  dislike  of  animal  food  by  vomiting  on 
the  stage,  I  think  we  should  be  justified  in 
saying  that  the  thing  was  outside,  not  the 
laws  of  morality,  but  the  framework  of 
civilised  literature.  The  instinctive  move- 
ment of  repulsion  which  everyone  has  when 
hearing  of  the  operation  in  Waste  is  not  an 
ethical  repulsion  at  all.  But  it  is  an  aesthetic 
repulsion,  and  a  right  one. 

But  I  have  only  dwelt  on  this  particular 
fighting  phase  because  it  leaves  us  facing  the 
ultimate  characteristics  which  I  mentioned  first. 
Bernard  Shaw  cares  nothing  for  art;  in  com- 
parison with  morals,  literally  nothing.  Bernard 
Shaw  is  a  Puritan  and  his  work  is  Puritan 
work.  He  has  all  the  essentials  of  the  old, 
virile  and  extinct  Protestant  type.  In  his 
work  he  is  as  ugly  as  a  Puritan.  He  is  as 
indecent  as  a  Puritan.  He  is  as  full  of  gross 
words  and  sensual  facts  as  a  sermon  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  Up  to  this  point  of  his 
life  indeed  hardly  anyone  would  have  dreamed 
of  calling  him  a  Puritan;  he  was  called  some- 
times an  anarchist,  sometimes  a  buffoon,  some- 
times (by  the  more  discerning  stupid  people) 
a  prig.  His  attitude  towards  current  problems 
was  felt  to  be  arresting  and  even  indecent;  I 

141 


George  Bernard  SJiaw 


do  not  think  that  anyone  thought  of  connect- 
ing it  with  the  old  Calvinistic  morality.  But 
Shaw,  who  knew  better  than  the  Shavians,  was 
at  this  moment  on  the  very  eve  of  confessing 
his  moral  origin.  The  next  book  of  plays 
he  produced  (including  The  Devil's  Disciple, 
Captain  Brasshound's  Co77verswn,  and  Caesar  and 
Cleopatra),  actually  bore  the  title  of  Plays  for 
Puritans. 

The  play  called  The  DeviFs  Disciple  has  great 
merits,  but  the  merits  are  incidental.  Some 
of  its  jokes  are  serious  and  important,  but  its 
general  plan  can  only  be  called  a  joke.  Almost 
alone  among  Bernard  Shaw's  plays  (except  of 
course  such  things  as  How  he  Lied  to  her  Hus- 
band and  The  Admirable  Bashville)  this  drama 
does  not  turn  on  any  very  plain  pivot  of 
ethical  or  philosophical  conviction.  The  artis- 
tic idea  seems  to  be  the  notion  of  a  melodrama 
in  which  all  the  conventional  melodramatic 
situations  shall  suddenly  take  unconventional 
turns.  Just  where  the  melodramatic  clergy- 
man would  show  courage  he  appears  to  show 
cowardice;  just  where  the  melodramatic  sinner 
would  confess  his  love  he  confesses  his  in- 
difference. This  is  a  little  too  like  the  Shaw 
of  the  newspaper  critics  rather  than  the  Shaw 
of  reality.      There   are   indeed   present   in   the 

142 


The  Dramatist 


play  two  of  the  writer's  principal  moral  con- 
ceptions. The  first  is  the  idea  of  a  great 
heroic  action  coming  in  a  sense  from  nowhere; 
that  is,  not  coming  from  any  commonplace 
motive;  being  born  in  the  soul  in  naked 
beauty,  coming  with  its  own  authority  and 
testifying  only  to  itself.  Shaw's  agent  does 
not  act  towards  something,  but  from  some- 
thing. The  hero  dies,  not  because  he  desires 
heroism,  but  because  he  has  it.  So  in  this 
particular  play  the  Devil's  Disciple  finds  that 
his  own  nature  will  not  permit  him  to  put  the 
rope  around  another  man's  neck;  he  has  no 
reasons  of  desire,  affection,  or  even  equity;  his 
death  is  a  sort  of  divine  whim.  And  in  con- 
nection with  this  the  dramatist  introduces 
another  favourite  moral;  the  objection  to  per- 
petual playing  upon  the  motive  of  sex.  He 
deliberately  lures  the  onlooker  into  the  net  of 
Cupid  in  order  to  tell  him  with  salutary 
decision  that  Cupid  is  not  there  at  all.  Mil- 
lions of  melodramatic  dramatists  have  made  a 
man  face  death  for  the  woman  he  loves;  Shaw 
makes  him  face  death  for  the  woman  he  does 
not  love — merely  in  order  to  put  woman  in 
her  place.  He  objects  to  that  idolatry  of 
sexualism  which  makes  it  the  fountain  of  all 
forcible  enthusiasms;  he  dislikes  the  amorous 

143 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


drama  which  makes  the  female  the  only  key  to 
the  male.  He  is  Feminist  in  politics,  but 
Anti-feminist  in  emotion.  His  key  to  most 
problems  is,  "Ne  cherchez  pas  la  femme." 

As  has  been  observed,  the  incidental  felici- 
ties of  the  play  are  frequent  and  memorable, 
especially  those  connected  with  the  character 
of  General  Burgoyne,  the  real  full-blooded, 
free-thinking  eighteenth  century  gentleman, 
who  was  much  too  much  of  an  aristocrat  not 
to  be  a  liberal.  One  of  the  best  thrusts  in 
all  the  Shavian  fencing  matches  is  that  which 
occurs  when  Richard  Dudgeon,  condemned  to 
be  hanged,  asks  rhetorically  why  he  cannot  be 
shot  like  a  soldier.  "Now  there  you  speak 
like  a  civilian,"  replies  General  Burgoyne. 
"Have  you  formed  any  conception  of  the 
condition  of  marksmanship  in  the  British 
Army?"  Excellent,  too,  is  the  passage  in 
which  his  subordinate  speaks  of  crushing  the 
enemy  in  America,  and  Burgoyne  asks  him 
who  will  crush  their  enemies  in  England, 
snobbery  and  jobbery  and  incurable  careless- 
ness and  sloth.  And  in  one  sentence  towards 
the  end,  Shaw  reaches  a  wider  and  more  genial 
comprehension  of  mankind  than  he  shows 
anywhere  else;  "it  takes  all  sorts  to  make  a 
world,    saints    as   well  as  soldiers."      If  Shaw 

144 


The  Dramatist 


had  remembered  that  sentence  on  other  occa- 
sions he  would  have  avoided  his  mistake 
about  Caesar  and  Brutus.  It  is  not  only  true 
that  it  takes  all  sorts  to  make  a  world;  but 
the  world  cannot  succeed  without  its  failures. 
Perhaps  the  most  doubtful  point  of  all  in  the 
play  is  why  it  is  a  play  for  Puritans;  except 
the  hideous  picture  of  a  Calvinistic  home  is 
meant  to  destroy  Puritanism.  And  indeed  in 
this  connection  it  is  constantly  necessary  to 
fall  back  upon  the  facts  of  which  I  have 
spoken  at  the  beginning  of  this  brief  study; 
it  is  necessary  especially  to  remember  that 
Shaw  could  in  all  probability  speak  of  Puritan- 
ism from  the  inside.  In  that  domestic  circle 
which  took  him  to  hear  Moody  and  Sankey, 
in  that  domestic  circle  w^hich  was  teetotal  even 
when  it  vv^as  intoxicated,  in  that  atmosphere 
and  society  Shaw  might  even  have  met  the 
monstrous  mother  in  The  DeviVs  Disciple, 
the  horrible  old  woman  who  declares  that  she 
has  hardened  her  heart  to  hate  her  children, 
because  the  heart  of  man  is  desperately  wicked, 
the  old  ghoul  who  has  made  one  of  her  chil- 
dren an  imbecile  and  the  other  an  outcast. 
Such  types  do  occur  in  small  societies  drunk 
with  the  dismal  wine  of  Puritan  determinism. 
It    is    possible    that    there    w^ere    among    Irish 

J  H5 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


Calvinlsts  people  who  denied  that  chanty  was 
a  Christian  virtue.  It  is  possible  that  among 
Puritans  there  were  people  who  thought  a 
heart  was  a  kind  of  heart  disease.  But  it  is 
enough  to  make  one  tear  one's  hair  to  think 
that  a  man  of  genius  received  his  first  im- 
pressions in  so  small  a  corner  of  Europe  that 
he  could  for  a  long  time  suppose  that  this 
Puritanism  was  current  among  Christian  men. 
The  question,  however,  need  not  detain  us, 
for  the  batch  of  plays  contained  two  others 
about  which  it  is  easier  to  speak. 

The  third  play  in  order  in  the  series  called 
Plays  for  Puritans  is  a  very  charming  one; 
Captain  Brasshound^s  Conversion.  This  also 
turns,  as  does  so  much  of  the  Caesar  drama,  on 
the  idea  of  vanity  of  revenge — the  idea  that 
it  is  too  slight  and  silly  a  thing  for  a  man 
to  allow  to  occupy  and  corrupt  his  conscious- 
ness. It  is  not,  of  course,  the  morality  that 
is  new  here,  but  the  touch  of  cold  laughter 
in  the  core  of  the  morality.  Many  saints  and 
sages  have  denounced  vengeance.  But  they 
treated  vengeance  as  something  too  great  for 
man.  "Vengeance  is  Mine,  saith  the  Lord; 
I  will  repay."  Shaw  treats  vengeance  as  some- 
thing too  small  for  man — a  monkey  trick  he 
ought    to    have    outlived,    a    childish    storm 

146 


The  Dramatist 


of  tears  which  he  ought  to  be  able  to  control. 
In  the  story  in  question  Captain  Brassbound 
has  nourished  through  his  whole  erratic  exist- 
ence, racketting  about  all  the  unsavoury  parts 
of  Africa — a  mission  of  private  punishment 
which  appears  to  him  as  a  mission  of  holy 
justice.  His  mother  has  died  in  consequence 
of  a  judge's  decision,  and  Brassbound  roams 
and  schemes  until  the  judge  falls  into  his 
hands.  Then  a  pleasant  society  lady,  Lady 
Cicely  Waynefleet  tells  him  in  an  easy  con- 
versational undertone — a  rivulet  of  speech 
which  ripples  while  she  is  mending  his  coat — 
that  he  is  making  a  fool  of  himself,  that  his 
wrong  is  Irrelevant,  that  his  vengeance  is 
objectless,  that  he  would  be  much  better  if  he 
flung  his  morbid  fancy  away  for  ever;  in 
short,  she  tells  him  he  is  ruining  himself  for 
the  sake  of  ruining  a  total  stranger.  Here 
again  we  have  the  note  of  the  economist,  the 
hatred  of  mere  loss.  Shaw  (one  might  almost 
say)  dislikes  murder,  not  so  much  because  it 
wastes  the  life  of  the  corpse  as  because  it 
wastes  the  time  of  the  murderer.  If  he  were 
endeavouring  to  persuade  one  of  his  moon- 
lighting fellow-countrymen  not  to  shoot  his 
landlord,  I  can  imagine  him  explaining  with 
benevolent  emphasis  that  it  was  not  so  much 

147 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


a  question  of  losing  a  life  as  of  throwing  away 
a  bullet.  But  indeed  the  Irish  comparison 
alone  suggests  a  doubt  which  wriggles  in  the 
recesses  of  my  mind  about  the  complete  re- 
liability of  the  philosophy  of  Lady  Cicely 
Waynefleet,  the  complete  finality  of  the  moral 
of  Captain  Brassbound's  Conversion.  Of  course, 
it  was  very  natural  in  an  aristocrat  like  Lady 
Cicely  Waynefleet  to  wish  to  let  sleeping  dogs 
lie,  especially  those  whom  Mr.  Blatchford  calls 
under-dogs.  Of  course  it  was  natural  for  her 
to  wish  everything  to  be  smooth  and  sweet- 
tempered.  But  I  have  the  obstinate  question 
in  the  corner  of  my  brain,  whether  if  a  few 
Captain  Brassbounds  did  revenge  themselves 
on  judges,  the  quality  of  our  judges  might  not 
materially  improve. 

When  this  doubt  is  once  ofF  one's  conscience 
one  can  lose  oneself  in  the  bottomless  beati- 
tude of  Lady  Cicely  Waynefleet,  one  of  the 
most  living  and  laughing  things  that  her 
maker  has  made.  I  do  not  know  any  stronger 
way  of  stating  the  beauty  of  the  character  than 
by  saying  that  it  was  written  specially  for 
Ellen  Terry,  and  that  it  is,  with  Beatrice,  one 
of  the  very  few  characters  in  which  the  drama- 
tist can  claim  some  part  of  her  triumph. 

We   may  now  pass  to  the   more  important 

148 


The  Dramatist 


of  the  plays.     For  some  time   Bernard   Shaw 
would  seem  to  have  been  brooding  upon   the 
soul  of  Julius  Caesar.     There  must  always  be 
a    strong    human   curiosity  about    the    soul    of 
Julius  Caesar;  and,  among  other  things,  about 
whether  he  had   a   soul.     The  conjunction   of 
Shaw    and    Caesar    has    about    it    something 
smooth  and  inevitable;  for  this  decisive  reason, 
that   Caesar   is    really   the   only   great    man   of 
history    to    whom    the    Shaw    theories    apply. 
Caesar  ivas  a  Shaw  hero.     Caesar  was  merciful 
without   being   in   the   least   pitiful;   his   mercy 
was   colder   than   justice.      Caesar  was   a   con- 
queror without   being   in   any   hearty   sense   a 
soldier;    his    courage    was    lonelier    than    fear. 
Caesar    was    a    demagogue    without    being    a 
democrat.     In  the  same  way  Bernard  Shaw  is 
a   demagogue   without   being   a   democrat.      If 
he  had  tried  to  prove  his  principle  from  any 
of  the   other   heroes   or  sages   of  mankind   he 
would    have    found    it    much    more    difficult. 
Napoleon  achieved  more  miraculous  conquest; 
but  during  his  most  conquering  epoch  he  was 
a  burning  boy  suicidally  in  love  with  a  woman 
far   beyond    his    age.      Joan    of  Arc    achieved 
far   more   instant   and   incredible  worldly   suc- 
cess;    but     Joan     of    Arc     achieved     worldly 
success  because  she  believed  in  another  world. 

149 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


Nelson  was  a  figure  fully  as  fascinating  and 
dramatically  decisive;  but  Nelson  was  "ro- 
mantic"; Nelson  was  a  devoted  patriot  and  a 
devoted  lover.  Alexander  was  passionate; 
Cromwell  could  shed  tears;  Bismarck  had 
some  suburban  religion;  Frederick  was  a 
poet;  Charlemagne  was  fond  of  children. 
But  Julius  Caesar  attracted  Shaw  not  less  by 
his  positive  than  by  his  negative  enormous- 
ness.  Nobody  can  say  with  certainty  that 
Caesar  cared  for  anything.  It  is  unjust  to  call 
Caesar  an  egoist;  for  there  is  no  proof  that  he 
cared  even  for  Caesar.  He  may  not  have  been 
either  an  atheist  or  a  pessimist.  But  he  may 
have  been;  that  is  exactly  the  rub.  He  may 
have  been  an  ordinary  decently  good  man 
slightly  deficient  in  spiritual  expansiveness. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  may  have  been  the 
incarnation  of  paganism  in  the  sense  that 
Christ  was  the  incarnation  of  Christianity.  As 
Christ  expressed  how  great  a  man  can  be 
humble  and  humane,  Caesar  may  have  ex- 
pressed how  great  a  man  can  be  frigid  and 
flippant.  According  to  most  legends  Anti- 
christ was  to  come  soon  after  Christ.  One 
has  only  to  suppose  that  Antichrist  came 
shortly  before  Christ;  and  Antichrist  might 
very  well  be  Caesar. 

150 


The  Dramatist 


It  IS,  I  think,  no  injustice  to  Bernard  Shaw 
to  say  that  he  does  not  attempt  to  make  his 
Caesar  superior  except  in  this  naked  and  nega- 
tive sense.  There  is  no  suggestion,  as  there 
is  in  the  Jehovah  of  the  Old  Testament,  that 
the  very  cruelty  of  the  higher  being  conceals 
some  tremendous  and  even  tortured  love. 
Caesar  is  superior  to  other  men  not  because 
he  loves  more,  but  because  he  hates  less. 
Caesar  is  magnanimous  not  because  he  is 
warm-hearted  enough  to  pardon,  but  because 
he  is  not  warm-hearted  enough  to  avenge. 
There  is  no  suggestion  anywhere  in  the  play 
that  he  is  hiding  any  great  genial  purpose  or 
powerful  tenderness  towards  men.  In  order 
to  put  this  point  beyond  a  doubt  the  dramatist 
has  introduced  a  soliloquy  of  Caesar  alone  with 
the  Sphinx.  There  if  anywhere  he  w^ould 
have  broken  out  into  ultimate  brotherhood  or 
burning  pity  for  the  people.  But  in  that 
scene  between  the  Sphinx  and  Caesar,  Caesar  is 
as  cold  and  as  lonely  and  as  dead  as  the 
Sphinx. 

But  whether  the  Shavian  Caesar  is  a  sound 
ideal  or  no,  there  can  be  Httle  doubt  that  he  is 
a  very  fine  reality.  Shaw  has  done  nothing 
greater  as  a  piece  of  artistic  creation.  If  the 
man  is  a  little  like  a  statue,  it  is  a  statue  by  a 

151 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


great  sculptor;  a  statue  of  the  best  period. 
If  his  nobility  is  a  little  negative  in  its  char- 
acter, it  is  the  negative  darkness  of  the  great 
dome  of  night;  not  as  in  some  "new  mor- 
alities'' the  mere  mystery  of  the  coal-hole. 
Indeed,  this  somewhat  austere  method  of  work 
is  very  suitable  to  Shaw  when  he  is  serious. 
There  is  nothing  Gothic  about  his  real  genius; 
he  could  not  build  a  mediaeval  cathedral  in 
which  laughter  and  terror  are  twisted  together 
in  stone,  molten  by  mystical  passion.  He  can 
build,  by  way  of  amusement,  a  Chinese  pagoda; 
but  when  he  is  in  earnest,  only  a  Roman 
temple.  He  has  a  keen  eye  for  truth;  but  he 
is  one  of  those  people  who  like,  as  the  saying 
goes,  to  put  down  the  truth  in  black  and 
white.  He  is  always  girding  and  jeering  at 
romantics  and  idealists  because  they  will  not 
put  down  the  truth  in  black  and  white.  But 
black  and  w^hite  are  not  the  only  two  colours 
in  the  world.  The  modern  man  of  science 
who  writes  down  a  fact  in  black  and  white  is 
not  more  but  less  accurate  than  the  mediaeval 
monk  who  wrote  it  down  in  gold  and  scarlet, 
sea-green  and  turquoise.  Nevertheless,  it  is  a 
good  thing  that  the  more  austere  method 
should  exist  separately,  and  that  some  men 
should  be  specially  good  at  it.     Bernard  Shaw 

152 


The  Dramatist 


is  specially  good   at  it;  he  is  pre-eminently  a 
black  and  white  artist. 

And  as  a  study  in  black  and  white  nothing 
could  be  better  than  this  sketch  of  Julius 
Caesar.  He  is  not  so  much  represented  as 
"bestriding  the  earth  Hke  a  Colossus"  (which 
is  indeed  a  rather  comic  attitude  for  a  hero  to 
stand  in),  but  rather  walking  the  earth  with 
a  sort  of  stern  levity,  lightly  touching  the 
planet  and  yet  spurning  it  away  like  a  stone. 
He  walks  like  a  winged  man  who  has  chosen 
to  fold  his  wings.  There  is  something  creepy 
even  about  his  kindness;  it  makes  the  men 
in  front  of  him  feel  as  if  they  were  made  of 
glass.  The  nature  of  the  Caesarian  mercy 
is  massively  suggested.  Caesar  dislikes  a 
massacre,  not  because  it  is  a  great  sin,  but 
because  it  is  a  small  sin.  It  is  felt  that  he 
classes  it  with  a  flirtation  or  a  fit  of  the  sulks; 
a  senseless  temporary  subjugation  of  man's 
permanent  purpose  by  his  passing  and  trivial 
feelings.  He  will  plunge  into  slaughter  for 
a  great  purpose,  just  as  he  plunges  into  the 
sea.  But  to  be  stung  into  such  action  he 
deems  as  undignified  as  to  be  tipped  off  the 
pier.  In  a  singularly  fine  passage  Cleopatra, 
having  hired  assassins  to  stab  an  enemy, 
appeals     to     her     wrongs     as     justifying     her 

153 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


revenge,  and  says,  "If  you  can  find  one  man 
in  all  Africa  who  says  that  I  did  wrong,  I  will 
be  crucified  by  my  own  slaves."  "If  you 
can  find  one  man  in  all  the  world,"  replies 
Caesar,  "who  can  see  that  you  did  wrong,  he 
will  either  conquer  the  world  as  I  have  done 
or  be  crucified  by  it/'  That  is  the  high  water 
mark  of  this  heathen  sublimity;  and  we  do 
not  feel  it  inappropriate,  or  unlike  Shaw, 
when  a  few  minutes  afterwards  the  hero  is 
saluted  with  a  blaze  of  swords. 

As  usually  happens  in  the  author's  works, 
there  is  even  more  about  Julius  Caesar  in  the 
preface  than  there  is  in  the  play.  But  in  the 
preface  I  think  the  portrait  is  less  imaginative 
and  more  fanciful.  He  attempts  to  connect 
his  somewhat  chilly  type  of  superman  with 
the  heroes  of  the  old  fairy  tales.  But  Shaw 
V  should  not  talk  about  the  fairy  tales;  for  he 
does  not  feel  them  from  the  inside.  As  I 
have  said,  on  all  this  side  of  historic  and 
domestic  traditions  Bernard  Shaw  is  weak  and 
deficient.  He  does  not  approach  them  as 
fairy  tales,  as  if  he  were  four,  but  as  "folk- 
lore" as  if  he  were  forty.  And  he  makes 
a  big  mistake  about  them  which  he  would 
never  have  made  if  he  had  kept  his  birthday 
and  hung  up  his  stocking,  and  generally  kept 

154 


The  Dramatist 


alive  Inside  him  the  firelight  of  a  home. 
The  point  Is  so  peculiarly  characteristic  of 
Bernard  Shaw,  and  is  indeed  so  much  of  a 
summary  of  his  most  Interesting  assertion  and 
his  most  interesting  error,  that  It  deserves 
a  word  by  itself,  though  it  Is  a  word  which 
must  be  remembered  in  connection  with  nearly 
all  the  other  plays. 

His  primary  and  defiant  proposition  Is  the 
Calvlnistic  proposition:  that  the  elect  do  not 
earn  virtue,  but  possess  it.  The  goodness  of 
a  man  does  not  consist  in  trying  to  be  good, 
but  in  being  good.  Julius  Caesar  prevails  over 
other  people  by  possessing  more  virtus  than 
they;  not  by  having  striven  or  suffered  or 
bought  his  virtue;  not  because  he  has 
struggled  heroically,  but  because  he  is  a  hero. 
So  far  Bernard  Shaw  Is  only  what  I  have 
called  him  at  the  beginning;  he  is  simply  a 
seventeenth-century  Calvinlst.  Caesar  Is  not 
saved  by  works,  or  even  by  faith;  he  Is  saved 
because  he  is  one  of  the  elect.  Unfortunately 
for  himself,  however,  Bernard  Shaw  went  back 
further  than  the  seventeenth  century;  and 
professing  his  opinion  to  be  yet  more  anti- 
quated, invoked  the  original  legends  of  man- 
kind. He  argued  that  when  the  fairy  tales 
gave   Jack   the   Giant   Killer  a   coat  of  dark- 

155 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


ness  or  a  magic  sword  it  removed  all  credit 
from  Jack  in  the  "common  moral"  sense; 
he  won  as  Caesar  won  only  because  he  was 
superior.  I  will  confess,  in  passing,  to  the 
conviction  that  Bernard  Shaw  in  the  course  of 
his  whole  simple  and  strenuous  life  was  never 
quite  so  near  to  hell  as  at  the  moment  when 
he  wrote  down  those  words.  But  in  this 
question  of  fairy  tales  my  immediate  point  is, 
not  how  near  he  was  to  hell,  but  how  very  far 
off  he  was  from  fairyland.  That  notion  about 
the  hero  with  a  magic  sword  being  the  super- 
man with  a  magic  superiority  is  the  caprice 
of  a  pedant;  no  child,  boy,  or  man  ever  felt 
it  in  the  story  of  Jack  the  Giant  Killer. 
Obviously  the  moral  is  all  the  other  way. 
Jack's  fairy  sword  and  invisible  coat  are 
clumsy  expedients  for  enabling  him  to  fight 
at  all  with  something  which  is  by  nature 
stronger.  They  are  a  rough,  savage  substi- 
tute for  psychological  descriptions  of  special 
valour  or  unwearied  patience.  But  no  one  in 
his  five  wits  can  doubt  that  the  idea  of  "Jack 
the  Giant  Killer"  is  exactly  the  opposite  to 
Shaw's  idea.  If  it  were  not  a  tale  of  effort 
and  triumph  hardly  earned  it  would  not  be 
called  "Jack  the  Giant  Killer."  If  it  were  a 
tale   of  the   victory   of  natural   advantages   it 

156 


The  Dramatist 


would  be  called  "Giant  the  Jack  Killer."  If 
the  teller  of  fairy  tales  had  merely  wanted  to 
urge  that  some  beings  are  born  stronger  than 
others  he  would  not  have  fallen  back  on 
elaborate  tricks  of  weapon  and  costume  for 
conquering  an  ogre.  He  would  simply  have 
let  the  ogre  conquer.  I  will  not  speak  of  my 
own  emotions  in  connection  with  this  in- 
credibly caddish  doctrine  that  the  strength  of 
the  strong  is  admirable,  but  not  the  valour 
of  the  weak.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  I  have 
to  summon  up  the  physical  presence  of  Shaw, 
his  frank  gestures,  kind  eyes,  and  exquisite 
Irish  voice,  to  cure  me  of  a  mere  sensation  of 
contempt.  But  I  do  not  dwell  upon  the  point 
for  any  such  purpose;  but  merely  to  show 
how  we  must  be  always  casting  back  to  those 
concrete  foundations  with  which  we  began. 
Bernard  Shaw,  as  I  have  said,  was  never 
national  enough  to  be  domestic;  he  was 
never  a  part  of  his  past;  hence  when  he  tries 
to  interpret  tradition  he  comes  a  terrible 
cropper,  as  in  this  case.  Bernard  Shaw  (I 
strongly  suspect)  began  to  disbelieve  in  Santa 
Claus  at  a  discreditably  early  age.  And  by 
this  time  Santa  Claus  has  avenged  himself  by 
taking  away  the  key  of  all  the  prehistoric 
scriptures;    so    that    a    noble    and    honourable 

157 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


artist  flounders  about  like  any  German  pro- 
fessor. Here  is  a  whole  fairy  literature  which 
is  almost  exclusively  devoted  to  the  unex- 
pected victory  of  the  weak  over  the  strong; 
and  Bernard  Shaw  manages  to  make  it  mean 
the  inevitable  victory  of  the  strong  over  the 
weak — which,  among  other  things,  would  not 
make  a  story  at  all.  It  all  comes  of  that 
mistake  about  not  keeping  his  birthday.  A 
man  should  be  always  tied  to  his  mother's 
apron  strings;  he  should  always  have  a  hold 
on  his  childhood,  and  be  ready  at  intervals  to 
start  anew  from  a  childish  standpoint.  Theo- 
logically the  thing  is  best  expressed  by  saying, 
"You  must  be  born  again.''  Secularly  it  is 
best  expressed  by  saying,  "You  must  keep 
your  birthday."  Even  if  you  will  not  be  born 
again,  at  least  remind  yourself  occasionally 
that  you  were  born  once. 

Some  of  the  incidental  wit  in  the  Caesarian 
drama  is  excellent  although  it  is  upon  the 
whole  less  spontaneous  and  perfect  than  in  the 
previous  plays.  One  of  its  jests  may  be  men- 
tioned in  passing,  not  merely  to  draw  attention 
to  its  failure  (though  Shaw  is  brilliant  enough 
to  aflFord  many  failures)  but  because  it  is  the 
best  opportunity  for  mentioning  one  of  the 
writer's  minor  notions  to  which  he  obstinately 

158 


The  Dramatist 


adheres.  He  describes  the  Ancient  Briton  in 
Caesar's  train  as  being  exactly  like  a  modern 
respectable  Englishman.  As  a  joke  for  a 
Christmas  pantomime  this  would  be  all  very 
well;  but  one  expects  the  jokes  of  Bernard 
Shaw  to  have  some  intellectual  root,  however 
fantastic  the  flower.  And  obviously  all  historic 
common  sense  is  against  the  idea  that  that  dim 
Druid  people,  whoever  they  were,  who  dwelt 
in  our  land  before  it  was  lit  up  by  Rome  or 
loaded  with  varied  invasions,  were  a  precise 
facsimile  of  the  commercial  society  of  Bir- 
mingham or  Brighton.  But  it  is  a  part  of  the 
Puritan  in  Bernard  Shaw,  a  part  of  the  taut 
and  high-strung  quality  of  his  mind,  that  he 
will  never  admit  of  any  of  his  jokes  that  it 
was  only  a  joke.  When  he  has  been  most 
witty  he  will  passionately  deny  his  own  wit; 
he  will  say  something  which  Voltaire  might 
envy  and  then  declare  that  he  has  got  it  all  out 
of  a  Blue  book.  And  in  connection  with  this 
eccentric  type  of  self-denial,  we  may  notice 
this  mere  detail  about  the  Ancient  Briton. 
Someone  faintly  hinted  that  a  blue  Briton 
when  first  found  by  Caesar  might  not  be  quite 
like  Mr.  Broadbent;  at  the  touch  Shaw 
poured  forth  a  torrent  of  theory,  explain- 
ing   that    climate    was    the    only    thing    that 

159 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


affected  nationality;  and  that  whatever  races 
came  into  the  English  or  Irish  climate  would 
become  like  the  English  or  Irish.  Now  the 
modern  theory  of  race  is  certainly  a  piece  of 
stupid  materialism;  it  is  an  attempt  to  explain 
the  things  we  are  sure  of,  France,  Scotland, 
Rome,  Japan,  by  means  of  the  things  we  are 
not  sure  of  at  all,  prehistoric  conjectures, 
Celts,  Mongols,  and  Iberians.  Of  course 
there  is  a  reality  in  race;  but  there  is  no 
reality  in  the  theories  of  race  offered  by  some 
ethnological  professors.  Blood,  perhaps,  is 
thicker  than  water;  but  brains  are  sometimes 
thicker  than  anything.  But  if  there  is  one 
thing  yet  more  thick  and  obscure  and  senseless 
than  this  theory  of  the  omnipotence  of  race 
it  is,  I  think,  that  to  which  Shaw  has  fled  for 
refuge  from  it;  this  doctrine  of  the  omni- 
potence of  climate.  Climate  again  is  something; 
but  if  climate  were  everything,  Anglo-Indians 
would  grow  more  and  more  to  look  Hke 
Hindoos,  which  is  far  from  being  the  case. 
Something  in  the  evil  spirit  of  our  time  forces 
people  always  to  pretend  to  have  found  some 
material  and  mechanical  explanation.  Bernard 
Shaw  has  filled  all  his  last  days  with  affirma- 
tions about  the  divinity  of  the  non-mechanical 
part  of  man,  the  sacred  quahty  in  creation  and 

1 60 


The  Dramatist 


choice.  Yet  it  never  seems  to  have  occurred 
to  him  that  the  true  key  to  national  differentia- 
tions is  the  key  of  the  will  and  not  of  the 
environment.  It  never  crosses  the  modern 
mind  to  fancy  that  perhaps  a  people  is  chiefly 
influenced  by  how  that  people  has  chosen  to 
behave.  If  I  have  to  choose  between  race 
and  weather  I  prefer  race;  I  would  rather  be 
imprisoned  and  compelled  by  ancestors  who 
were  once  alive  than  by  mud  and  mists  which 
never  were.  But  I  do  not  propose  to  be 
controlled  by  either;  to  me  my  national  his- 
tory is  a  chain  of  multitudinous  choices.  It  is 
neither  blood  nor  rain  that  has  made  England, 
but  hope,  the  thing  that  all  those  dead  men 
have  desired.  France  was  not  France  because 
she  was  made  to  be  by  the  skulls  of  the  Celts 
or  by  the  sun  of  Gaul.  France  was  France 
because  she  chose. 

I  have  stepped  on  one  side  from  the  imme- 
diate subject  because  this  is  as  good  an  instance 
as  any  we  are  likely  to  come  across  of  a  cer- 
tain almost  extraneous  fault  which  does  deface 
the  work  of  Bernard  Shaw.  It  is  a  fault  only 
to  be  mentioned  when  we  have  made  the 
solidity  of  the  merits  quite  clear.  To  say 
that  Shaw  is  merely  making  game  of  people  is 
demonstrably  ridiculous;  at  least  a  fairly  sys- 
K  i6i 


George  Bernard   Shaw 


tematic  philosophy  can  be  traced  through  all 
his  jokes,  and  one  would  not  insist  on  such  a 
unity  in  all  the  songs  of  Mr.  Dan  Leno.  I 
have  already  pointed  out  that  the  genius  of 
Shaw  is  really  too  harsh  and  earnest  rather 
than  too  merry  and  irresponsible.  I  shall 
have  occasion  to  point  out  later  that  Shaw  is, 
in  one  very  serious  sense,  the  very  opposite  of 
paradoxical.  In  any  case  if  any  real  student 
of  Shaw  says  that  Shaw  is  only  making  a  fool 
of  him,  we  can  only  say  that  of  that  student  it 
is  very  superfluous  for  anyone  to  make  a  fool. 
But  though  the  dramatist's  jests  are  always 
serious  and  generally  obvious,  he  is  really 
afi^ected  from  time  to  time  by  a  certain  spirit 
of  which  that  climate  theory  is  a  case — a  spirit 
that  can  only  be  called  one  of  senseless  in- 
genuity. I  suppose  it  is  a  sort  of  nemesis  of 
wit;  the  skidding  of  a  wheel  in  the  height  of 
its  speed.  Perhaps  it  is  connected  with  the 
nomadic  nature  of  his  mind.  That  lack  of 
roots,  this  remoteness  from  ancient  instincts 
and  traditions  is  responsible  for  a  -^ertain  bleak 
and  heartless  extravagance  of  statement  on 
certain  subjects  which  makes  the  author  really 
unconvincing  as  well  as  exaggerative;  satires 
that  are  saugrenu,  jokes  that  are  rather  silly 
than   wild,   statements   which  even   considered 

162 


The  Dramatist 


as  lies  have  no  symbolic  relation  to  truth. 
They  are  exaggerations  of  something  that  does 
not  exist.  For  instance,  if  a  man  called 
Christmas  Day  a  mere  hypocritical  excuse 
for  drunkenness  and  gluttony  that  would  be 
false,  but  it  would  have  a  fact  hidden  in  it 
somewhere.  But  when  Bernard  Shaw  says 
that  Christmas  Day  is  only  a  conspiracy  kept 
up  by  poulterers  and  wine  merchants  from 
strictly  business  motives,  then  he  says  some- 
thing which  is  not  so  much  false  as  startlingly 
and  arrestingly  foolish.  He  might  as  well  say 
that  the  two  sexes  were  invented  by  jewellers 
who  wanted  to  sell  wedding  rings.  Or  again, 
take  the  case  of  nationality  and  the  unit  of 
patriotism.  If  a  man  said  that  all  boundaries 
betw^een  clans,  kingdoms,  or  empires  were 
nonsensical  or  non-existent,  that  would  be  a 
fallacy,  but  a  consistent  and  philosophical 
fallacy.  But  when  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  says 
that  England  matters  so  little  that  the  British 
Empire  might  very  well  give  up  these  islands 
to  Germany,  he  has  not  only  got  hold  of  the 
sow  by  the  wrong  ear  but  the  wrong  sow  by 
the  wrong  ear;  a  mythical  sow,  a  sow  that  is 
not  there  at  all.  If  Britain  is  unreal,  the 
British  Empire  must  be  a  thousand  times 
more  unreal.     It  is  as  if  one  said,  "I  do  not 

163 


George    Bernard   Shaw 


believe  that  Michael  Scott  ever  had  any  exist- 
ence; but  I  am  convinced,  in  spite  of  the 
absurd  legend,  that  he  had  a  shadow." 

As  has  been  said  already,  there  must  be 
some  truth  in  every  popular  impression. 
And  the  impression  that  Shaw,  the  most 
savagely  serious  man  of  his  time,  is  a  mere 
music-hall  artist  must  have  reference  to 
such  rare  outbreaks  as  these.  As  a  rule  his 
speeches  are  full,  not  only  of  substance,  but  of 
substances,  materials  like  pork,  mahogany, 
lead,  and  leather.  There  is  no  man  whose 
arguments  cover  a  more  Napoleonic  map  of 
detail.  It  is  true  that  he  jokes;  but  wherever 
he  is  he  has  topical  jokes,  one  might  almost 
say  family  jokes.  If  he  talks  to  tailors  he  can 
allude  to  the  last  absurdity  about  buttons.  If 
he  talks  to  the  soldiers  he  can  see  the  exquisite 
and  exact  humour  of  the  last  gun-carriage. 
But  when  all  his  powerful  practicality  Is 
allowed,  there  does  run  through  him  this 
erratic  levity,  an  explosion  of  ineptitude.  It 
is  a  queer  quality  in  literature.  It  is  a  sort  of 
cold  extravagance;  and  it  has  made  him  all  his 
enemies. 


164 


The  Philosopher 


I  SHOULD  suppose  that  Ccesar  and  Cleo- 
patra marks  about  the  turning  tide  of 
Bernard  Shaw's  fortune  and  fame.  Up 
to  this  time  he  had  known  glory,  but 
never  success.  He  had  been  wondered  at  as 
something  brilliant  and  barren,  like  a  meteor; 
but  no  one  would  accept  him  as  a  sun,  for  the 
test  of  a  sun  is  that  it  can  make  something  grow. 
Practically  speaking  the  two  qualities  of  a 
modern  drama  are,  that  it  should  play  and  that 
it  should  pay.  It  had  been  proved  over  and 
over  again  in  weighty  dramatic  criticisms,  in 
careful  readers'  reports,  that  the  plays  of  Shaw 
could  never  play  or  pay;  that  the  public  did 
not  want  wit  and  the  wars  of  intellect.  And 
just  about  the  time  that  this  had  been  finally 
proved,  the  plays  of  Bernard  Shaw  promised  to 
play  like  Charley  s  Aunt  and  to  pay  like  Colman's 
Mustard.  It  is  a  fact  in  which  we  can  all  re- 
joice not  only  because  it  redeems  the  reputation 
of  Bernard  Shaw,  but  because  it  redeems  the 
character  of  the  English  people.  All  that  is 
bravest  in  human  nature,  open  challenge  and 
unexpected  wit  and  angry  conviction,  are  not 

165 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


so  very  unpopular  as  the  publishers  and  mana- 
gers in  their  motor-cars  have  been  in  the  habit  of 
telling  us.  But  exactly  because  v^e  have  come  to 
a  turning  point  in  the  man's  career  I  propose  to 
interrupt  the  mere  catalogue  of  his  plays  and 
to  treat  his  latest  series  rather  as  the  proclama- 
tions of  an  acknowledged  prophet.  For  the 
last  plays,  especially  Man  and  Superman,  are 
such  that  his  whole  position  must  be  re-stated 
before  attacking  them  seriously. 

For  two  reasons  I  have  called  this  concluding 
series  of  plays  not  again  by  the  name  of  "The 
Dramatist,"  but  by  the  general  name  of  **The 
Philosopher."  The  first  reason  is  that  given 
above,  that  we  have  come  to  the  time  of  his 
triumph  and  may  therefore  treat  him  as  having 
gained  complete  possession  of  a  pulpit  of  his 
own.  But  there  is  a  second  reason:  that  it 
was  just  about  this  time  that  he  began  to 
create  not  only  a  pulpit  of  his  own,  but  a 
church  and  creed  of  his  own.  It  is  a  very 
vast  and  universal  religion;  and  it  is  not  his 
fault  that  he  is  the  only  member  of  it.  The 
plainer  way  of  putting  it  is  this:  that  here, 
in  the  hour  of  his  earthly  victory,  there  dies 
in  him  the  old  mere  denier,  the  mere  dyna- 
miter of  criticism.  In  the  warmth  of  popu- 
larity   he    begins    to    wish    to    put    his    faith 

1 66 


The  Philosopher 


positively;  to  offer  some  solid  key  to  all 
creation.  Perhaps  the  irony  in  the  situation 
is  this:  that  all  the  crowds  are  acclaiming;  him 
as  the  blasting  and  hypercritical  buffoon,  while 
he  himself  is  seriously  rallying  his  synthetic 
power,  and  with  a  grave  face  telling  himself 
that  it  is  time  he  had  a  faith  to  preach.  His 
final  success  as  a  sort  of  charlatan  coincides 
with  his  first  grand  failures  as  a  theologian. 

For  this  reason  I  have  deliberately  called 
a  halt  in  his  dramatic  career,  in  order  to  con- 
sider these  two  essential  points:  What  did 
the  mass  of  Englishmen,  who  had  now  learnt 
to  admire  him,  imagine  his  point  of  view  to 
be  ^  and  second,  What  did  he  imagine  it  to  be  ? 
or,  if  the  phrase  be  premature,  WTiat  did  he 
imagine  it  was  going  to  be  ^  In  his  latest 
work,  especially  in  Man  and  Superman,  Shaw 
has  become  a  complete  and  colossal  mystic. 
That  mysticism  does  grow  quite  rationally  out 
of  his  older  arguments;  but  veiy^  few  people 
ever  troubled  to  trace  the  connection.  In 
order  to  do  so  it  is  necessar}'  to  say  what  was, 
at  the  time  of  his  first  success,  the  pubHc  im- 
pression of  Shaw's  philosophy. 

Now  it  is  an  irritating  and  pathetic  thing 
that  the  three  most  popular  phrases  about 
Shaw    are    false.      Modern    criticism,    like    all 

167 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


weak  things,  Is  overloaded  with  words.  In  a 
healthy  condition  of  language  a  man  finds  it 
very  difficult  to  say  the  right  thing,  but  at  last 
says  it.  In  this  empire  of  journalese  a  man 
finds  it  so  very  easy  to  say  the  wrong  thing 
that  he  never  thinks  of  saying  anything  else. 
False  or  meaningless  phrases  lie  so  ready  to 
his  hand  that  It  Is  easier  to  use  them  than  not 
to  use  them.  These  wrong  terms  picked  up 
through  Idleness  are  retained  through  habit, 
and  so  the  man  has  begun  to  think  wrong 
almost  before  he  has  begun  to  think  at  all. 
Such  lumbering  logomachy  is  always  injurious 
and  oppressive  to  men  of  spirit,  imagination 
or  Intellectual  honour,  and  It  has  dealt  very 
recklessly  and  wrongly  with  Bernard  Shaw. 
He  has  contrived  to  get  about  three  news- 
paper phrases  tied  to  his  tail;  and  those  news- 
paper phrases  are  all  and  separately  wrong. 
The  three  superstitions  about  him.  It  will  be 
conceded,  are  generally  these:  first  that  he 
desires  "problem  plays,"  second  that  he  is 
"paradoxical,"  and  third  that  in  his  dramas  as 
elsewhere  he  Is  specially  "a  Socialist."  And 
the  Interesting  thing  is  that  when  we  come  to 
his  philosophy,  all  these  three  phrases  are  quite 
peculiarly  Inapplicable. 

i68 


The  Philosopher 


To  take  the  plays  first,  there  is  a  general 
disposition  to  describe  that  type  of  intimate 
or  defiant  drama  which  he  approves  as  "the 
problem  play."  Now  the  serious  modern  play 
is,  as  a  rule,  the  very  reverse  of  a  problem 
play;  for  there  can  be  no  problem  unless  both 
points  of  view  are  equally  and  urgently  pre- 
sented. Hamlet  really  is  a  problem  play 
because  at  the  end  of  it  one  is  really  in  doubt 
as  to  whether  upon  the  author's  showing 
Hamlet  is  something  more  than  a  man  or 
something  less.  Henry  IV  and  Henry  V  are 
really  problem  plays;  in  this  sense,  that  the 
reader  or  spectator  is  really  doubtful  whether 
the  high  but  harsh  efficiency,  valour,  and 
ambition  of  Henry  V  are  an  improvement 
on  his  old  blackguard  camaraderie;  and 
w^hether  he  was  not  a  better  man  when  he  was 
a  thief.  This  hearty  and  healthy  doubt  is 
very  common  in  Shakespeare;  I  mean  a  doubt 
that  exists  in  the  writer  as  well  as  in  the 
reader.  But  Bernard  Shaw  is  far  too  much  of 
a  Puritan  to  tolerate  such  doubts  about  points 
which  he  counts  essential.  There  is  no  sort  of 
doubt  that  the  young  lady  in  Arms  and  the  Man 
is  improved  by  losing  her  ideals.  There  is  no 
sort  of  doubt  that  Captain  Brassbound  is  im- 
proved   by   giving    up    the    object   of  his    life. 

169 


George  Bernard  Shaiv 


But  a  better  case  can  be  found  in  something 
that  both  dramatists  have  been  concerned  with; 
Shaw  wrote  Ccesar  and  Cleopatra;  Shakespeare 
wrote  Antony  and  Cleopatra  and  also  'Julius 
Ccesar.  And  exactly  what  annoys  Bernard 
Shaw  about  Shakespeare's  version  i.s  this: 
that  Shakespeare  has  an  open  mind  or,  in 
other  w^ords,  that  Shakespeare  has  really  writ- 
ten a  problem  play.  Shakespeare  sees  quite  as 
clearly  as  Shaw  that  Brutus  is  unpractical  and 
ineffectual;  but  he  also  sees,  what  is  quite  as 
plain  and  practical  a  fact,  that  these  ineffectual 
men  do  capture  the  hearts  and  influence  the 
policies  of  mankind.  Shaw  would  have  noth- 
ing said  in  favour  of  Brutus;  because  Brutus 
is  on  the  wrong  side  in  politics.  Of  the 
actual  problem  of  public  and  private  morality, 
as  it  was  presented  to  Brutus,  he  takes  actually 
no  notice  at  all.  He  can  write  the  most  ener- 
getic and  outspoken  of  propaganda  plays;  but 
he  cannot  rise  to  a  problem  play.  He  cannot 
really  divide  his  mind  and  let  the  two  parts 
speak  independently  to  each  other.  He  has 
never,  so  to  speak,  actually  spHt  his  head  in 
two;  though  I  daresay  there  are  many  other 
people  who  are  willing  to  do  it  for  him. 

Sometimes,  especially  in  his  later  plays,  he 
allows   his   clear   conviction   to   spoil   even   his 

170 


The  Philosopher 


admirable  dialogue,  making  one  side  entirely 
weak,  as  in  an  Evangelical  tract.  I  do  not 
know  whether  in  Major  Barbara  the  young 
Greek  professor  was  supposed  to  be  a  fool. 
As  popular  tradition  (which  I  trust  more 
than  anything  else)  declared  that  he  is  drawn 
from  a  real  Professor  of  my  acquaintance, 
who  is  anything  but  a  fool,  I  should  imagine 
not.  But  in  that  case  I  am  all  the  more 
mystified  by  the  incredibly  weak  fight  which 
he  makes  in  the  play  in  answer  to  the 
elephantine  sophistries  of  Undershaft.  It  is 
really  a  disgraceful  case,  and  almost  the  only 
case  in  Shaw  of  there  being  no  fair  fight 
between  the  two  sides.  For  instance,  the 
Professor  mentions  pity.  Mr.  Undershaft 
says  with  melodramatic  scorn,  "Pity!  the 
scavenger  of  the  Universe!"  Now  if  any 
gentleman  had  said  this  to  me,  I  should  have 
replied,  "If  I  permit  you  to  escape  from  the 
point  by  means  of  metaphors,  will  you  tell 
me  whether  you  disapprove  of  scavengers  ?" 
Instead  of  this  obvious  retort,  the  miserable 
Greek  professor  only  says,  "Well  then,  love," 
to  which  Undershaft  replies  with  unnecessary 
violence  that  he  won't  have  the  Greek  pro- 
fessor's love,  to  which  the  obvious  answer  of 
course  would   be,    "  How  the   deuce   can   you 

171 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


prevent  my  loving  you  if  I  choose  to  do  so?" 
Instead  of  this,  as  far  as  I  remember,  that 
abject  Hellenist  says  nothing  at  all.  I  only 
mention  this  unfair  dialogue,  because  it  marks, 
I  think,  the  recent  hardening,  for  good  or 
evil,  of  Shaw  out  of  a  dramatist  into  a  mere 
philosopher,  and  v^hoever  hardens  into  a  phi- 
losopher may  be  hardening  into  a  fanatic. 

And  just  as  there  is  nothing  really  prob- 
lematic in  Shaw's  mind,  so  there  is  nothing 
really  paradoxical.  The  meaning  of  the  word 
paradoxical  may  indeed  be  made  the  subject 
of  argument.  In  Greek,  of  course,  it  sim- 
ply means  something  which  is  against  the 
received  opinion;  in  that  sense  a  missionary 
remonstrating  with  South  Sea  cannibals  is 
paradoxical.  But  in  the  much  more  im- 
portant world,  where  words  are  used  and 
altered  in  the  using,  paradox  does  not  mean 
merely  this:  it  means  at  least  something  of 
which  the  antinomy  or  apparent  inconsistency 
is  sufficiently  plain  in  the  words  used,  and 
most  commonly  of  all  it  means  an  idea  ex- 
pressed in  a  form  which  is  verbally  contradic- 
tory. Thus,  for  instance,  the  great  saying, 
"He  that  shall  lose  his  life,  the  same  shall 
save  it,"  is  an  example  of  what  modern  people 
mean  by  a   paradox.     If  any  learned  person 

172 


The  Philosopher 


should  read  this  book  (which  seems  im- 
measurably improbable)  he  can  content  him- 
self with  putting  it  this  way,  that  the  moderns 
mistakenly  say  paradox  when  they  should  say 
oxymoron.  Ultimately,  in  any  case,  it  may 
be  agreed  that  we  commonly  mean  by  a 
paradox  some  kind  of  collision  between  what 
is  seemingly  and  what  is  really  true. 

Now  if  by  paradox  we  mean  truth  inherent 
in  a  contradiction,  as  in  the  saying  of  Christ 
that  I  have  quoted,  it  is  a  very  curious  fact 
that  Bernard  Shaw  is  almost  entirely  without 
paradox.  Moreover,  he  cannot  even  under- 
stand a  paradox.  And  more  than  this,  paradox 
is  about  the  only  thing  in  the  world  that  he 
does  not  understand.  All  his  splendid  vistas 
and  startling  suggestions  arise  from  carrymg 
some  one  clear  principle  further  than  it  has 
yet  been  carried.  His  madness  is  all  con- 
sistency, not  inconsistency.  As  the  point  can 
hardly  be  made  clear  without  examples,  let  us 
take  one  example,  the  subject  of  education. 
Shaw  has  been  all  his  life  preaching  to  grown- 
up people  the  profound  truth  that  liberty  and 
responsibility  go  together;  that  the  reason 
why  freedom  is  so  often  easily  withheld,  is 
simply  that  it  is  a  terrible  nuisance.  This  is 
true,  though  not  the  whole  truth,  of  citizens; 

V3 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


and  so  when  Shaw  comes  to  children  he  can 
only  apply  to  them  the  same  principle  that  he 
has  already  applied  to  citizens.  He  begins  to 
play  with  the  Herbert  Spencer  idea  of  teaching 
children  by  experience;  perhaps  the  most 
fatuously  silly  idea  that  was  ever  gravely  put 
down  in  print.  On  that  there  is  no  need  to 
dwell;  one  has  only  to  ask  how  the  experi- 
mental method  is  to  be  appHed  to  a  precipice; 
and  the  theory  no  longer  exists.  But  Shaw 
effected  a  further  development,  if  possible 
more  fantastic.  He  said  that  one  should  never 
tell  a  child  anything  without  letting  him  hear 
the  opposite  opinion.  That  is  to  say,  when 
you  tell  Tommy  not  to  hit  his  sick  sister  on 
the  temple,  you  must  make  sure  of  the 
presence  of  some  Nietzscheite  professor,  who 
will  explain  to  him  that  such  a  course  might 
possibly  serve  to  eliminate  the  unfit.  When 
you  are  in  the  act  of  telling  Susan  not  to 
drink  out  of  the  bottle  labelled  "poison," 
you  must  telegraph  for  a  Christian  Scientist, 
who  will  be  ready  to  maintain  that  without 
her  own  consent  it  cannot  do  her  any  harm. 
What  would  happen  to  a  child  brought  up  on 
Shaw's  principle  I  cannot  conceive;  I  should 
think  he  would  commit  suicide  in  his  bath. 
But  that  is  not  here  the  question.    The  point 

174 


The  Philosopher 


\ 


is  that  this  proposition  seems  quite  sufficiently 
wild  and  startling  to  ensure  that  its  author,  if 
he  escapes  Hanwell,  would  reach  the  front  rank 
of  journalists,  demagogues,  or  public  enter- 
tainers. It  is  a  perfect  paradox,  if  a  paradox 
only  means  something  that  makes  one  jump. 
But  it  is  not  a  paradox  at  all  in  the  sense  of  / 
a  contradiction.  It  is  not  a  contradiction,  but  ^ 
an  enormous  and  outrageous  consistency,  the 
one  principle  of  free  thought  carried  to  a 
point  to  which  no  other  sane  man  would  con- 
sent to  carry  it.  Exactly  what  Shaw  does  not 
understand  is  the  paradox;  the  unavoidable 
paradox  of  childhood.  Although  this  child 
is  much  better  than  I,  yet  I  must  teach  it. 
Although  this  being  has  much  purer  passions 
than  I,  yet  I  must  control  it.  Although 
Tommy  is  quite  right  to  rush  towards  a 
precipice,  yet  he  must  be  stood  in  the  corner 
for  doing  it.  This  contradiction  is  the  only 
possible  condition  of  having  to  do  with  chil- 
dren at  all;  anyone  w^ho  talks  about  a  child 
without  feeling  this  paradox  might  just  as 
well  be  talking  about  a  merman.  He  has 
never  even  seen  the  animal.  But  this  paradox 
Shaw  in  his  intellectual  simplicity  cannot  see; 
he  cannot  see  it  because  it  is  a  paradox.  His 
only    intellectual    excitement    is    to    carry    one 

175 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


idea  further  and  further  across  the  world.     It 

never  occurs  to  him  that  it  might  meet  another 

idea,    and    Hke    the    three    winds    in    Martin 

Chuzzlewify    they    might    make    a    night   of  it. 

His  only  paradox  is  to  pull  out  one  thread  or 

cord    of  truth    longer    and    longer   into    waste 

and  fantastic  places.     He  does  not  allow  for 

/  that    deeper    sort    of    paradox    by  which    two 

I  opposite   cords   of  truth   become   entangled   in 

an    inextricable    knot.      Still    less    can    he    be 

\  made  to  realise  that  it  is  often  this  knot  which 

'ties  safely  together  the  whole  bundle  of  human 

life. 

This  blindness  to  paradox  everywhere  per- 
plexes his  outlook.  He  cannot  understand 
marriage  because  he  will  not  understand  the 
paradox  of  marriage;  that  the  woman  is  all 
the  more  the  house  for  not  being  the  head  of 
it.  He  cannot  understand  patriotism,  because 
he  will  not  understand  the  paradox  of  patriot- 
ism; that  one  is  all  the  more  human  for  not 
merely  loving  humanity.  He  does  not  under- 
stand Christianity  because  he  will  not  under- 
stand the  paradox  of  Christianity;  that  we  can 
f  only  really  understand  all  myths  when  we 
I  know  that  one  of  them  is  true.  I  do  not 
under-rate  him  for  this  anti-paradoxical  temper; 
I  concede  that  much  of  his  finest  and  keenest 

176 


The  Philosopher 


work  in  the  way  of  intellectual  purification 
would  have  been  difficult  or  impossible  without 
it.  But  I  say  that  here  lies  the  Hmitation  of  that 
lucid  and  compelling  mind;  he  cannot  quite 
understand  life,  because  he  will  not  accept  its 
contradictions. 

Nor  is  it  by  any  means  descriptive  of  Shaw 
to  call  him  a  Socialist;  in  so  far  as  that  word 
can  be  extended  to  cover  an  ethical  attitude. 
He  is  the  least  social  of  all  Socialists;  and  I 
pity  the  Socialist  state  that  tries  to  manage 
him.  This  anarchism  of  his  is  not  a  question 
of  thinking  for  himself;  every  decent  man 
thinks  for  himself;  it  would  be  highly  im- 
modest to  think  for  anybody  else.  Nor  is  it 
any  instinctive  licence  or  egoism;  as  I  have 
said  before,  he  is  a  man  of  peculiarly  acute 
public  conscience.  The  unmanageable  part  of 
him,  the  fact  that  he  cannot  be  conceived  as 
part  of  a  crowd  or  as  really  and  invisibly  help- 
ing a  movement,  has  reference  to  another 
thing  in  him,  or  rather  to  another  thing  not 
in  him. 

The  great  defect  of  that  fine  intelligence  is 
a  failure  to  grasp  and  enjoy  the  things  com- 
monly called  convention  and  tradition;  which 
are  foods  upon  which  all  human  creatures 
must    feed    frequently    if    they    are    to    live. 

L  177 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


Very  few  modern  people  of  course  have  any 
idea  of  what  they  are.  "Convention"  is 
very  nearly  the  same  word  as  "democracy." 
It  has  again  and  again  in  history  been  used 
as  an  alternative  word  to  Parliament.  So  far 
from  suggesting  anything  stale  or  sober,  the 
word  convention  rather  conveys  a  hubbub; 
it  is  the  coming  together  of  men;  every  mob 
is  a  convention.  In  its  secondary  sense  it 
means  the  common  soul  of  such  a  crowd,  its 
instinctive  anger  at  the  traitor  or  its  instinc- 
tive salutation  of  the  flag.  Conventions  may 
be  cruel,  they  may  be  unsuitable,  they  may 
even  be  grossly  superstitious  or  obscene;  but 
there  is  one  thing  that  they  never  are.  Con- 
ventions are  never  dead.  They  are  always 
full  of  accumulated  emotions,  the  piled-up 
and  passionate  experiences  of  many  genera- 
tions asserting  what  they  could  not  explain. 
To  be  inside  any  true  convention,  as  the 
Chinese  respect  for  parents  or  the  European 
respect  for  children,  is  to  be  surrounded  by 
something  which  whatever  else  it  is  is  not 
leaden,  lifeless  or  automatic,  something  which 
is  taut  and  tingling  with  vitality  at  a  hundred 
points,  which  is  sensitive  almost  to  madness 
and  which  is  so  much  alive  that  it  can  kill. 
Now  Bernard  Shaw  has  always  made  this  one 

178 


The  Philosopher 


immense  mistake  (arising  out  of  that  bad 
progressive  education  of  his),  the  mistake 
of  treating  convention  as  a  dead  thing;  treat- 
ing it  as  if  it  were  a  mere  physical  environ- 
ment like  the  pavement  or  the  rain.  Where- 
as it  is  a  result  of  will;  a  rain  of  blessings 
and  a  pavement  of  good  intentions.  Let  it 
be  remembered  that  I  am  not  discussing  in 
what  degree  one  should  allow  for  tradition; 
I  am  saying  that  men  like  Shaw  do  not  allow 
for  it  at  all.  If  Shaw  had  found  in  early  life 
that  he  was  contradicted  by  Bradshaw^s  Rail- 
way Guide  or  even  by  the  Encyclopcedia  Brit- 
annic a,  he  would  have  felt  at  least  that  he 
might  be  wrong.  But  if  he  had  found  him- 
self contradicted  by  his  father  and  mother,  he 
would  have  thought  it  all  the  more  probable 
that  he  was  right.  If  the  Issue  of  the  last 
evening  paper  contradicted  him  he  might  be 
troubled  to  investigate  or  explain.  That  the 
human  tradition  of  two  thousand  years  con- 
tradicted him  did  not  trouble  him  for  an 
instant.  That  Marx  was  not  with  him  was 
important.  That  Man  was  not  with  him  was 
an  Irrelevant  prehistoric  joke.  People  have 
talked  far  too  much  about  the  paradoxes  of 
Bernard  Shaw.  Perhaps  his  only  pure  para- 
dox is   this   almost   unconscious   one;   that   he 

179 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


has  tended  to  think  that  because  something 
has  satisfied  generations  of  men  it  must  be 
untrue. 

Shaw  is  wrong  about  nearly  all  the  things 
one  learns  early  in  life  and  while  one  is  still 
simple.  Most  human  beings  start  with  certain 
facts  of  psychology  to  which  the  rest  of  life 
must  be  somewhat  related.  For  instance, 
every  man  falls  in  love;  and  no  man  falls  into 
free  love.  When  he  falls  into  that  he  calls  it 
lust,  and  is  always  ashamed  of  it  even  when  he 
boasts  of  it.  That  there  is  some  connection 
between  a  love  and  a  vow  nearly  every  human 
being  knows  before  he  is  eighteen.  That 
there  is  a  solid  and  instinctive  connection 
between  the  idea  of  sexual  ecstasy  and  the 
idea  of  some  sort  of  almost  suicidal  con- 
stancy, this  I  say  is  simply  the  first  fact  in 
one's  own  psychology;  boys  and  girls  know 
it  almost  before  they  know  their  own  language. 
How  far  it  can  be  trusted,  how  it  can  best  be 
dealt  with,  all  that  is  another  matter.  But 
lovers  lust  after  constancy  more  than  after 
happiness;  if  you  are  in  any  sense  pre- 
pared to  give  them  what  they  ask,  then  what 
they  ask,  beyond  all  question,  is  an  oath  of 
final  fidelity.  Lovers  may  be  lunatics;  lovers 
may    be    children;    lovers    may    be    unfit    for 

i8o 


The  Philosopher 


citizenship  and  outside  human  argument; 
you  can  take  up  that  position  If  you  will. 
But  lovers  do  not  only  desire  love;  they 
desire  marriage.  The  root  of  legal  monogamy 
does  not  He  (as  Shaw  and  his  friends  are  for 
ever  drearily  asserting)  in  the  fact  that  the 
man  Is  a  mere  tyrant  and  the  woman  a  mere 
slave.  It  lies  in  the  fact  that  //  their  love 
for  each  other  Is  the  noblest  and  freest  love 
conceivable,  It  can  only  find  Its  heroic  ex- 
pression In  both  becoming  slaves.  I  only 
mention  this  matter  here  as  a  matter  which 
most  of  us  do  not  need  to  be  taught;  for 
It  was  the  first  lesson  of  life.  In  after  years 
we  may  make  up  what  code  or  compromise 
about  sex  we  like;  but  we  all  know  that  con- 
stancy, jealousy,  and  the  personal  pledge  are 
natural  and  Inevitable  In  sex;  we  do  not  feel 
any  surprise  when  we  see  them  either  In  a 
murder  or  In  a  valentine.  We  may  or  may  not 
see  wisdom  in  early  marriages;  but  we  know 
quite  well  that  wherever  the  thing  is  genuine 
at  all,  early  loves  will  mean  early  marriages. 
But  Shaw  had  not  learnt  about  this  tragedy 
of  the  sexes,  what  the  rustic  ballads  of  any 
country  on  earth  would  have  taught  him. 
He  had  not  learnt,  what  universal  common 
sense    has    put    Into    all    the    folk-lore    of  the 

i8i 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


earth,  that  love  cannot  be  thought  of  clearly 
for  an  instant  except  as  monogamous.  The 
old  English  ballads  never  sing  the  praises  of 
"lovers."  They  always  sing  the  praises  of 
"true  lovers/'  and  that  is  the  final  philosophy 
of  the  question. 

The  same  is  true  of  Mr.  Shaw's  refusal  to 
understand  the  love  of  the  land  either  in  the 
form  of  patriotism  or  of  private  ownership. 
It  is  the  attitude  of  an  Irishman  cut  off  from 
the  soil  of  Ireland,  retaining  the  audacity  and 
even  cynicism  of  the  national  type,  but  no 
longer  fed  from  the  roots  with  its  pathos  or 
its  experience. 

This  broader  and  more  brotherly  rendering 
of  convention  must  be  applied  particularly  to 
the  conventions  of  the  drama;  since  that  is 
necessarily  the  most  democratic  of  all  the  arts. 
And  it  will  be  found  generally  that  most  of 
the  theatrical  conventions  rest  on  a  real  artistic 
basis.  The  Greek  Unities,  for  instance,  were 
not  proper  objects  of  the  meticulous  and 
trivial  imitation  of  Seneca  or  Gabriel  Harvey. 
But  still  less  were  they  the  right  objects  for 
the  equally  trivial  and  far  more  vulgar  im- 
patience of  men  like  Macaulay.  That  a  tale 
should,  if  possible,  be  told  of  one  place  or  one 
day  or  a  manageable  number  of  characters  is  an 

182 


The  Philosopher 


ideal  plainly  rooted  in  an  aesthetic  instinct. 
But  if  this  be  so  with  the  classical  drama,  it  is 
yet  more  certainly  so  with  romantic  drama, 
against  the  somewhat  decayed  dignity  of  which 
Bernard  Shaw  was  largely  in  rebellion.  There 
was  one  point  in  particular  upon  which  the 
Ibsenites  claimed  to  have  reformed  the 
romantic  convention  which  is  worthy  of  special 
allusion. 

Shaw  and  all  the  other  Ibsenites  were  fond 
of  insisting  that  a  defect  in  the  romantic 
drama  was  its  tendency  to  end  with  wedding- 
bells.  Against  this  they  set  the  modern 
drama  of  middle-age,  the  drama  which  de- 
scribed marriage  itself  instead  of  its  poetic 
preliminaries.  Now  if  Bernard  Shaw  had 
been  more  patient  with  popular  tradition, 
more  prone  to  think  that  there  might  be 
some  sense  in  its  survival,  he  might  have 
seen  this  particular  problem  much  more 
clearly.  The  old  playwrights  have  left  us 
plenty  of  plays  of  marriage  and  middle-age. 
Othello  is  as  much  about  what  follows  the 
wedding-bells  as  The  DolFs  House.  Macbeth 
is  about  a  middle-aged  couple  as  much  as 
Little  Eyolf.  But  if  we  ask  ourselves  what 
is  the  real  difference,  we  shall,  I  think,  find 
that   it   can    fairly   be   stated   thus.      The   old 

183 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


tragedies  of  marriage,  though  not  love  stories, 
are  like  love  stories  in  this,  that  they  work 
up  to  some  act  or  stroke  which  is  irrevocable 
as  marriage  is  irrevocable;  to  the  fact  of  death 
or  of  adultery. 

Now  the  reason  why  our  fathers  did  not 
make  marriage,  in  the  middle-aged  and  static 
sense,  the  subject  of  their  plays  was  a  very 
simple  one;  it  was  that  a  play  is  a  very  bad 
place  for  discussing  that  topic.  You  cannot 
easily  make  a  good  drama  out  of  the  success 
or  failure  of  a  marriage,  just  as  you  could  not 
make  a  good  drama  out  of  the  growth  of  an 
oak  tree  or  the  decay  of  an  empire.  As 
Polonius  very  reasonably  observed,  it  is  too 
long.  A  happy  love-affair  will  make  a  drama 
simply  because  it  is  dramatic;  it  depends  on 
an  ultimate  yes  or  no.  But  a  happy  marriage 
is  not  dramatic;  perhaps  it  would  be  less 
happy  if  it  were.  The  essence  of  a  rom.antic 
heroine  is  that  she  asks  herself  an  intense 
question;  but  the  essence  of  a  sensible  wife 
is  that  she  is  much  too  sensible  to  ask  herself 
any  questions  at  all.  All  the  things  that  make 
monogamy  a  success  are  in  their  nature  un- 
dramatic  things,  the  silent  growth  of  an 
instinctive  confidence,  the  common  wounds 
and    victories,    the    accumulation    of   customs, 

184 


The  Philosopher 


the  rich  maturing  of  old  jokes.  Sane  mar- 
riage is  an  untheatrical  thing;  it  is  therefore 
not  surprising  that  most  modern  dramatists 
have  devoted  themselves  to  insane  marriage. 

To  summarise;  before  touching  the  philo- 
sophy which  Shaw  has  ultimately  adopted,  we 
must  quit  the  notion  that  we  know  it  already 
and  that  it  is  hit  off  in  such  journalistic  terms 
as  these  three.  Shaw  does  not  wish  to  multiply 
problem  plays  or  even  problems.  He  has  such 
scepticism  as  is  the  misfortune  of  his  age;  but 
he  has  this  dignified  and  courageous  quality, 
that  he  does  not  come  to  ask  questions  but  to 
answer  them.  He  is  not  a  paradox-monger; 
he  is  a  wild  logician,  far  too  simple  even  to  be 
called  a  sophist.  He  understands  everything 
in  life  except  its  paradoxes,  especially  that  ulti- 
mate paradox  that  the  very  things  that  we  can- 
not comprehend  are  the  things  that  we  have  to 
take  for  granted.  Lastly,  he  is  not  especially 
social  or  collectivist.  On  the  contrary,  he  rather 
dislikes  men  in  the  mass,  though  he  can  appre- 
ciate them  individually.  He  has  no  respect 
for  collective  humanity  in  its  two  great  forms; 
either  in  that  momentary  form  which  we  call 
a  mob,  or  in  that  enduring  form  which  we  call 
a  convention. 

.85 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


The  general  cosmic  theory  which  can  so  far 
be  traced  through  the  earlier  essays  and  plays 
of  Bernard  Shaw  may  be  expressed  in  the 
image  of  Schopenhauer  standing  on  his  head. 
I  cheerfully  concede  that  Schopenhauer  looks 
much  nicer  in  that  posture  than  in  his  original 
one,  but  I  can  hardly  suppose  that  he  feels 
more  comfortable.  The  substance  of  the  change 
is  this.  Roughly  speaking,  Schopenhauer  main- 
tained that  life  is  unreasonable.  The  intellect, 
if  it  could  be  impartial,  would  tell  us  to  cease; 
but  a  blind  partiality,  an  instinct  quite  dis- 
tinct from  thought,  drives  us  on  to  take 
desperate  chances  in  an  essentially  bankrupt 
lottery.  Shaw  seems  to  accept  this  dingy 
estimate  of  the  rational  outlook,  but  adds  a 
somewhat  arresting  comment.  Schopenhauer 
had  said,  "Life  is  unreasonable;  so  much  the 
worse  for  all  living  things."  Shaw  said,  '*Life 
is  u^iireasonable;  so  much  the  worse  for  reason." 
Life  is  the  higher  ^all,  life  we  must  follow.  It 
may  be  that  there  is  some  undetected  fallacy  in 
reason  itself.  Perhaps  the  whole  man  cannot 
get  inside  his  own  head  any  more  than  he  can 
jump  down  his  own  throat.  But  there  is  about 
the  need  to  live,  to  suffer,  an^to  create  that 
imperative  quality  which  can  truly  be  called 
supernatural,  of  whose  voice  it  can  indeed  be 

i86 


The  Philosopher 


said  that  it  speaks  with  authority,  and  not  as 
the  scribes. 

This  is  the  first  and  finest  item  of  the  original 
Bernard  Shaw  creed:  that  if  reason  says  that 
life  is  irrational,  life  must  be  content  to  reply 

that    reason    is    lifeless;    lifers the    primary 

thing,  and  if  reason  impedes  it,  then  reason 
must  be  trodden  down  into  the  mire  amid  the 
most  abject  superstitions.  In  the  ordinary 
sense  it  would  be  specially  absurd  to  suggest 
that  Shaw  desires  man  to  be  a  mere  animal. 
For  that  is  always  associated  with  lust  or  in- 
continence; and  Shaw's  ideals  are  strict, 
hygienic,  and  even,  one  might  say,  old-maidish. 
But  there  is  a  mystical  sense  in  which  one 
may  say  literally  that  Shaw  desires  man  to 
be  an  animal.  That  is,  he  desires  him  to 
cling  first__and_last  to  life,  to  the  spirit  of 
animation,  to  the  thing  which  is  common  to 
him*  and  the  biTds  and  plants.  Man  should 
have ^the~Hlmd  faith  of  a  beast:  he  should  be 
as  mystically  immutable  as  a  cow,  and  as  deaf 
to  sophistries  as  a  fish.  Shaw  does  not  wish 
him  to  be  a  philosopher  or  an  artist;  he  does 
not  even  wish  him  to  be  a  man,  so  much  as 
he  wishes  him  to  be,  in  this  holy  sense,  an 
animal.     He   must   follow  the  flag  of  life  as 

187 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


fiercely  from  conviction  as  all  other  creatures 
follow  it  from  instinct. 

But  this  Shavian  v^orship  of  life  is  by  no 
means  lively.  It  has  nothing  in  common  either 
v^ith  the  braver  or  the  baser  forms  of  w^hat  v^e 
commonly  call  optimism.  It  has  none  of  the 
omnivorous  exultation  of  Walt  Whitman  or 
the  fiery  pantheism  of  Shelley.  Bernard  Shaw^ 
v^ishes  to  show^  himself  not  so  much  as  an 
optimist,  but  rather  as  a  sort  of  faithful  and 
contented  pessimist.  This  contradiction  is  the 
key  to  nearly  all  his  early  and  more  obvious 
contradictions  and  to  many  v^hich  remain  to  the 
end.  Whitman  and  many  modern  idealists 
have  talked  of  taking  even  duty  as  a  pleasure; 
it  seems  to  me  that  Shaw  takes  even  pleasure 
as  a  duty.  In  a  queer  way  he  seems  to  see 
existence  as  an  illusion  and  yet  as  an  obligation. 
To  every  man  and  woman,  bird,  beast,  and 
flower,  life  is  a  love-call  to  be  eagerly  followed. 
To  Bernard  Shaw  it  is  merely  a  military 
bugle  to  be  obeyed.  In  short,  he  fails  to  feel 
that  the  command  of  Nature  (if  one  must  use 
the  anthropomorphic  fable  of  Nature  instead  of 
the  philosophic  term  God)  can  be  enjoyed  as 
well  as  obeyed.  He  paints  life  at  its  darkest 
and  then  tells  the  babe  unborn  to  take  the  leap 
in    the    dark.      That    is    heroic;    and    to    my 


The  Philosopher 


instinct  at  least  Schopenhauer  looks  like  a 
pigmy  beside  his  pupil.  But  it  is  the  hero- 
ism of  a  morbid  and  almost  asphyxiated  age. 
It  is  awful  to  think  that  this  world  which  so 
many  poets  have  praised  has  even  for  a  time 
been  depicted  as  a  man-trap  into  which  we 
may  just  have  the  manhood  to  jump.  Think 
of  all  those  ages  through  which  men  have 
talked  of  having  the  courage  to  die.  And 
then  remember  that  we  have  actually  fallen 
to  talking  about  having  the  courage  to 
live. 

It  is  exactly  this  oddity  or  dilemma  which 
may  be  said  to  culminate  in  the  crowning  work 
of  his  later  and  more  constructive  period,  the 
work  in  which  he  certainly  attempted,  whether 
with  success  or  not,  to  state  his  ultimate  and 
cosmic  vision;  I  mean  the  play  called  Man 
and  Superman.  In  approaching  this  play  we 
must  keep  well  in  mind  the  distinction  recently 
drawn:  that  Shaw  follows  the  banner  of  life, 
but  austerely,  not  joyously.  For  him  nature 
has  authority,  but  hardly  charm.  But  before 
we  approach  it  it  is  necessary  to  deal  with  three 
things  that  lead  up  to  it.  First  it  is  necessary 
to  speak  of  what  remained  of  his  old  critical 
and  realistic  method;  and  then  it  is  necessary 
to  speak  of  the  tw^o  important  influences  which 

189 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


led  up  to  his  last  and  most  important  change  of 
outlook. 

First,  since  all  our  spiritual  epochs  overlap, 
and  a  man  is  often  doing  the  old  work  while 
he  is  thinking  of  the  new,  we  may  deal  first 
with  what  may  be  fairly  called  his  last  two 
plays  of  pure  worldly  criticism.  These  are 
Major  Barbara  and  John  BulFs  Other  Island. 
Major  Barbara  indeed  contains  a  strong 
religious  element;  but,  when  all  is  said,  the 
whole  point  of  the  play  is  that  the  religious 
element  is  defeated.  Moreover,  the  actual 
expressions  of  religion  in  the  play  are  some- 
what unsatisfactory  as  expressions  of  religion — 
or  even  of  reason.  I  must  frankly  say  that 
Bernard  Shaw  always  seems  to  me  to  use  the 
word  God  not  only  without  any  idea  of  what 
it  means,  but  without  one  moment's  thought 
about  what  it  could  possibly  mean.  He  said 
to  some  atheist,  "Never  believe  in  a  God  that 
you  cannot  improve  on."  The  atheist  (being 
a  sound  theologian)  naturally  replied  that  one 
should  not  believe  in  a  God  whom  one  could 
improve  on;  as  that  would  show  that  he  was 
not  God.  In  the  same  style  in  Major  Bar- 
bara the  heroine  ends  by  suggesting  that  she 
will  serve  God  without  personal  hope,  so  that 
she   may  owe  nothing  to  God   and   He  owe 

190 


The  Philosopher 


everything  to  her.  It  does  not  seem  to  strike 
her  that  if  God  owes  everything  to  her  He  is 
not  God.  These  things  afFect  me  merely  as 
tedious  perversions  of  a  phrase.  It  is  as  if  you 
said,  ''I  will  never  have  a  father  unless  I  have 
begotten  him." 

But  the  real  sting  and  substance  of  Major 
Barbara  is  much  more  practical  and  to  the 
point.  It  expresses  not  the  new  spirituality 
but  the  old  materialism  of  Bernard  Shaw. 
Almost  every  one  of  Shaw's  plays  is  an  ex- 
panded epigram.  But  the  epigram  is  not 
expanded  (as  with  most  people)  into  a  hundred 
commonplaces.  Rather  the  epigram  is  ex- 
panded into  a  hundred  other  epigrams;  the 
work  is  at  least  as  brilliant  in  detail  as  it  is  in 
design.  But  it  is  generally  possible  to  discover 
the  original  and  pivotal  epigram  which  is  the 
centre  and  purpose  of  the  play.  It  is  generally 
possible,  even  amid  that  blinding  jewellery  of 
a  million  jokes,  to  discover  the  grave,  solemn 
and  sacred  joke  for  which  the  play  itself  was 
written. 

The    ultimate    epigram    of   Major    Barbara 
can  be  put  thus.     People  say  that  poverty  is  ^ 
no  crime;  Shaws  says  that  poverty  is  a  crime;  ' 
that  it  is  a  crime  to  endure  it,  a  crime  to  be 
content  with   it,   that  it  is  the   mother  of  all 

191 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


crimes  of  brutality,  corruption,  and  fear.  If 
a  man  says  to  Shaw  that  he  is  born  of  poor 
'but  honest  parents,  Shaw  tells  him  that  the 
very  word  *'but"  shows  that  his  parents  were 
probably  "dtshohest.  In  short,  he  maintains 
I  here  what  he  had  maintained  elsewhere:  that 
;  what  the  people  at  this  moment  require  Is  not 
I  more  patriotism  or  more  art  or  more  religion 
or  more  morality  or  more  sociology,  but  simply 
more  money.  The  evil  is  not  ignorance  or 
decadence  or  sin  or  pessimism;  the  evil  is 
poverty.  The  point  of  this  particular  drama 
is  that  even  the  noblest  enthusiasm  of  the  girl 
who  becomes  a  Salvation  Army  officer  f^ils 
under  the  brute  money  power  of  her  father 
who  is  a  modern  capitalist.  When  I  have  said 
this  it  will  be  clear  why  this  play,  fine  and  full 
of  bitter  sincerity  as  it  is,  must  in  a  manner 
be  cleared  out  of  the  way  before  we  come  to 
talk  of  Shaw's  final  and  serious  faith.  For 
his  serious  faith  is  iji_the  sanctity  of  human 
willj^nthe^  divine  capacity  for  creation  and 
choice  rising  higher  than  environment  and 
doom;  and  so  far  as  that  goes.  Major  Bar- 
bara is  not  only  apart  from  his  faith  but 
against  his  faith.  Major  Barbara  is  an  ac- 
count of  environment  victorious  over  heroic 
will.     There   are   a   thousand   answers   to  the 

192 


The  Philosopher 


ethic  in  Major  Barbara  which  I  should  be 
inclined  to  offer.  I  might  point  out  that  the 
rich  do  not  so  much  buy  honesty  as  curtains  to 
cover  dishonesty:  that  they  do  not  so  much  buy 
health  as  cushions  to  comfort  disease.  And  I 
might  suggest  that  the  doctrine  that  poverty 
degrades  the  poor  is  much  more  likely  to  be 
used  as  an  argument  for  keeping  them  power- 
less than  as  an  argument  for  making  them 
rich.      But    there    is    no    need    to    find    such 

answers ^to.    the     materialistic     pessimism     of 

Major  Barbara.  The  best  answer  to  it 
is  in  Shaw's  own  best  and  crq\vning  philo- 
sophy, with  which  we  shall  shortly  be  con- 
cerned. 

^ohn  BulFs  Other  Island  represents  a  realism 
somewhat  more  tinged  with  the  later  trans- 
cendentalism of  its  author.  In  one  sense,  of 
course,  it  is  a  satire  on  the  conventional 
Englishman,  who  is  never  so  silly  or  senti- 
mental as  when  he  sees  silliness  and  sentiment 
in  the  Irishman.  Broadbent,  whose  mind  is 
all  fog  and  his  morals  all  gush,  is  firmly  per- 
suaded that  he  is  bringing  reason  and  order 
among  the  Irish,  whereas  in  truth  they  are  all 
smiling  at  his  illusions  with  the  critical  de- 
tachment of  so  many  devils.  There  have  been 
many  plays  depicting  the  absurd   Paddy  in  a 

M  193 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


ring  of  Anglo-Saxons;  the  first  purpose  of 
this  play  is  to  depict  the  absurd  Anglo-Saxon 
in  a  rino;  of  ironical  Paddies.  But  it  has  a 
second  and  more  subtle  purpose,  which  is 
very  finely  contrived.  It  is  suggested  that 
when  all  is  said  and  done  there  is  in  this  pre- 
posterous Englishman  a  certain  creative  power 
which  comes  from  his  simplicity  and  optimism, 
from  his  profound  resolution  rather  to  live 
life  than  to  criticise  it.  I  know  no  finer  dia- 
logue of  philosophical  cross-purposes  than  that 
in  which  Broadbent  boasts  of  his  common- 
sense,  and  his  subtler  Irish  friend  mystifies 
him  by  telling  him  that  he,  Broadbent,  has 
no  common-sense,  but  only  inspiration.  The 
Irishman  admits  in  Broadbent  a  certain  un- 
conscious spiritual  force  even  in  his  very 
stupidity.  Lord  Rosebery  coined  the  very 
clever  phrase  *'a  practical  mystic."  Shaw  is 
here  maintaining  that  all  practical  men  are 
,  practical  mystics.  And  he  is  really  main- 
taining also  that  the  most  practical  of  all  the 
practical  mystics  is  the  one  who  is  a  fool. 

There  is  something  unexpected  and  fascinat- 
ing about  this  reversal  of  the  usual  argument 
touching  enterprise  and  the  business  man; 
this  theory  that  success  is  created  not  by  in- 
telligence, but  by  a  certain  half-witted  and  yet 

194 


The  Philosopher 


magical  instinct.  For  Bernard  Shaw,  appar- 
ently, the  forests  of  factories  and  the  moun- 
tains of  money  are  not  the  creations  of  human 
wisdom  or  even  of  human  cunning;  they  are 
rather  manifestations  of  the  sacred  maxim 
which  declares  that  God  has  chosen  the  foolish 
things  of  the  earth  to  confound  the  wise.  It 
is  simplicity  and  even  innocence  that  has  made 
Manchester.  As  a  philosophical  fancy  this  is 
interesting  or  even  suggestive;  but  it  must  be 
confessed  that  as  a  criticism  of  the  relations 
of  England  to  Ireland  it  is  open  to  a  strong 
historical  objection.  The  one  weak  point  in 
John  Bull's  Other  Island  is  that  it  turns  on 
the  fact  that  Broadbent  succeeds  in  Ireland. 
But  as  a  matter  of  fact  Broadbent  has  not 
succeeded  in  Ireland.  If  getting  what  one 
wants  is  the  test  and  fruit  of  this  mysterious 
strength,  then  the  Irish  peasants  are  certainly 
much  stronger  than  the  English  merchants; 
for  in  spite  of  all  the  efforts  of  the  merchants, 
the  land  has  remained  a  land  of  peasants.  No 
glorification  of  the  English  practicality  as  if  it 
were  a  universal  thing  can  ever  get  over  the 
fact  that  we  have  failed  in  dealing  with  the 
one  white  people  in  our  power  who  were 
markedly  unlike  ourselves.  And  the  kindness 
of  Broadbent  has   failed  just  as   much   as  his 

195 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


common-sense;  because  he  was  dealing  with  a 
people  whose  desire  and  ideal  were  different 
from  his  own.  He  did  not  share  the  Irish 
passion  for  small  possession  in  land  or  for  the 
more  pathetic  virtues  of  Christianity.  In  fact 
the  kindness  of  Broadbent  has  failed  for  the 
same  reason  that  the  gigantic  kindness  of 
Shaw  has  failed.  The  roots  are  different;  it 
is  like  tying  the  tops  of  two  trees  together. 
Briefly,  the  philosophy  of  John  BulFs  Other 
Island  is  quite  effective  and  satisfactory 
except  for  this  incurable  fault:  the  fact  that 
John  Bull's  other  island  is  not  John  Bull's. 

This  clearing  off  of  his  last  critical  plays 
we  may  classify  as  the  first  of  the  three  facts 
which  lead  up  to  Man  and  Superman.  The 
second  of  the  three  facts  may  be  found,  I 
think,  in  Shaw's  discovery  of  Nietzsche.  This 
eloquent  sophist  has  an  influence  upon  Shaw 
and  his  school  which  it  would  require  a  separate 
book  adequately  to  study.  By  descent  Nietzsche 
was  a  Pole,  and  probably  a  Polish  noble;  and 
to  say  that  he  was  a  Polish  noble  is  to  say  that 
he  was  a  frail,  fastidious,  and  entirely  useless 
anarchist.  He  had  a  wonderful  poetic  wit; 
and  is  one  of  the  best  rhetoricians  of  the 
modern  world.  He  had  a  remarkable  power 
of  saying  things  that  master  the  reason  for  a 

196 


The  Philosopher 


moment  by  their  gigantic  unreasonableness; 
as,  for  Instance,  "Your  life  Is  Intolerable  with- 
out Immortality;  but  why  should  not  your 
life  be  Intolerable?"  His  whole  work  Is  shot 
through  with  the  pangs  and  fevers  of  his 
physical  life,  which  was  one  of  extreme  bad 
health;  and  In  early  middle  age  his  brilliant 
brain  broke  down  Into  Impotence  and  dark- 
ness. All  that  was  true  In  his  teaching  was 
this:  that  If  a  man  looks  fine  on  a  horse  It  Is 
so  far  Irrelevant  to  tell  him  that  he  would  be 
more  economical  on  a  donkey  or  more  humane 
on  a  tricycle.  In  other  words,  the  mere  achieve- 
ment of  dignity,  beauty,  or  triumph  Is  strictly 
to  be  called  a  good  thing.  I  do  not  know  if 
Nietzsche  ever  used  the  Illustration;  but  It 
seems  to  me  that  all  that  is  creditable  or  sound  in 
Nietzsche  could  be  stated  In  the  derivation  of 
one  word,  the  word  "valour."  Valour  means 
valeur;  It  means  a  value;  courage  Is  itself  a 
solid  good;  It  Is  an  ultimate  virtue;  valour 
is  In  itself  valid.  In  so  far  as  he  maintained 
this  Nietzsche  was  only  taking  part  in  that 
great  Protestant  game  of  see-saw  which  has 
been  the  amusement  of  northern  Europe  since 
the  sixteenth  century.  Nietzsche  Imagined  he 
was  rebelling  against  ancient  morality;  as  a 
matter  of  fact   he   was   only   rebelling   against 

197 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


recent  morality,  against  the  half-baked  impu- 
dence of  the  utilitarians  and  the  materialists. 
He  thought  he  was  rebelling  against  Chris- 
tianity; curiously  enough  he  was  rebelling 
solely  against  the  special  enemies  of  Chris- 
tianity, against  Herbert  Spencer  and  Mr. 
Edward  Clodd.  Historic  Christianity  has 
always  believed  in  the  valour  of  St.  Michael 
riding  in  front  of  the  Church  Militant;  and  in 
an  ultimate  and  absolute  pleasure,  not  indirect 
or  utilitarian,  the  intoxication  of  the  spirit,  the 
wine  of  the  blood  of  God. 

There  are  indeed  doctrines  of  Nietzsche  that 
are  not  Christian,  but  then,  by  an  entertaining 
coincidence,  they  are  also  not  true.  His 
hatred  of  pity  is  not  Christian,  but  that  was 
not  his  doctrine  but  his  disease.  Invalids  are 
often  hard  on  invalids.  And  there  is  another 
doctrine  of  his  that  is  not  Christianity,  and 
also  (by  the  same  laughable  accident)  not 
common-sense;  and  it  is  a  most  pathetic  cir- 
cumstance that  this  was  the  one  doctrine 
which  caught  the  eye  of  Shaw  and  captured 
him.  He  was  not  influenced  at  all  by  the 
morbid  attack  on  mercy.  It  would  require 
more  than  ten  thousand  mad  Polish  pro- 
fessors to  make  Bernard  Shaw  anything  but 
a  generous  and  compassionate  man.     But  it  is 

198 


The  Philosopher 


certainly  a  nuisance  that  the  one  Nietzsche 
doctrine  which  attracted  him  was  not  the  one 
Nietzsche  doctrine  that  Is  human  and  rectify- 
ing. Nietzsche  might  really  have  done  some 
good  if  he  had  taught  Bernard  Shaw  to  draw 
the  sword,  to  drink  wine,  or  even  to  dance. 
But  he  only  succeeded  in  putting  into  his 
head  a  new  superstition,  which  bids  fair  to 
be  the  chief  superstition  of  the  dark  ages 
which  are  possibly  in  front  of  us — I  mean 
the  superstition  of  what  is  called  the  Super- 
man. 

In  one  of  his  least  convincing  phrases, 
Nietzsche  had  said  that  just  as  the  ape  ulti- 
mately produced  the  man,  so  should  we  ulti- 
mately produce  something  higher  than  the 
man.  The  Immediate  answer,  of  course,  is 
sufficiently  obvious:  the  ape  did  not  worry 
about  the  man,  so  why  should  we  worry  about 
the  Superman  ?  If  the  Superman  will  come 
by  natural  selection,  may  we  leave  It  to  natural 
selection  ?  If  the  Superman  will  come  by 
human  selection,  what  sort  of  Superman  are 
wx  to  select  .^  If  he  is  simply  to  be  more 
just,  more  brave,  or  more  merciful,  then 
Zarathustra  sinks  into  a  Sunday-school 
teacher;  the  only  way  we  can  work  for  It  is 
to  be  more  just,  more  brave,  and  more  merci- 

199 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


ful;  sensible  advice,  but  hardly  startling.  If 
he  is  to  be  anything  else  than  this,  why  should 
we  desire  him,  or  what  else  are  we  to  desire  ? 
These  questions  have  been  many  times  asked 
of  the  Nietzscheites,  and  none  of  the  Nietz- 
scheites  have  even  attempted  to  answer  them. 

The  keen  intellect  of  Bernard  Shaw  would, 
I  think,  certainly  have  seen  through  this  fal- 
lacy and  verbiage  had  it  not  been  that  another 
important  event  about  this  time  came  to  the 
help  of  Nietzsche  and  established  the  Super- 
man on  his  pedestal.  It  is  the  third  of  the 
things  which  I  have  called  stepping-stones  to 
Man  and  Superman^  and  it  is  very  im- 
portant. It  is  nothing  less  than  the  break- 
down of  one  of  the  three  intellectual  supports 
upon  which  Bernard  Shaw  had  reposed  through 
all  his  confident  career.  At  the  beginning  of 
this  book  I  have  described  the  three  ultimate 
supports  of  Shaw  as  the  Irishman,  the  Puritan, 
and  the  Progressive.  They  are  the  three  legs 
of  the  tripod  upon  which  the  prophet  sat  to 
give  the  oracle;  and  one  of  them  broke.  Just 
about  this  time  suddenly,  by  a  mere  shaft  of 
illumination,  Bernard  Shaw  ceased  to  believe 
in  progress  altogether. 

It  is  generally  implied  that  it  was  reading 
Plato  that  did  it.     That  philosopher  was  very 

200 


TJie  Philosopher 


well  qualified  to  convey  the  first  shock  of  the 
ancient  civilisation  to  Shaw,  who  had  always 
thought  instinctively  of  civilisation  as  modern. 
This  is  not  due  merely  to  the  daring  splendour 
of  the  speculations  and  the  vivid  picture  of 
Athenian  life,  it  is  due  also  to  something 
analogous  in  the  personalities  of  that  par- 
ticular ancient  Greek  and  this  particular 
modern  Irishman.  Bernard  Shaw  has  much 
affinity  to  Plato — in  his  instinctive  elevation  of 
temper,  his  courageous  pursuit  of  ideas  as  far 
as  they  will  go,  his  civic  idealism;  and  also,  it 
must  be  confessed,  in  his  dislike  of  poets  and 
a  touch  of  delicate  inhumanity.  But  whatever 
influence  produced  the  change,  the  change  had 
all  the  dramatic^suddenness  and  completeness^'j^ 
which  belongs  to  the  conversions  of  great 
men.  It  had  been  perpetually  implied  through 
all  the  earlier  works  not  only  that  mankind  is 
constantly  improving,  but  that  almost  every- 
thing must  be  considered  in  the  light  of  this 
fact.  More  than  once  he  seemed  to  argue,  in 
comparing  the  dramatists  of  the  sixteenth 
with  those  of  the  nineteenth  century,  that 
the  latter  had  a  definite  advantage  merely 
because  they  were  of  the  nineteenth  century 
and  not  of  the  sixteenth.  When  accused  of 
impertinence     towards     the     greatest     of    the 

201 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


Elizabethans,  Bernard  Shaw  had  said, 
**  Shakespeare  is  a  much  taller  man  than  I, 
but  I  stand  on  his  shoulders" — an  epigram 
which  sums  up  this  doctrine  with  character- 
istic neatness.  But  Shaw  fell  off  Shakespeare's 
shoulders  with  a  crash.  This  chronological 
theory  that  Shaw  stood  on  Shakespeare's 
shoulders  logically  involved  the  supposition 
that  Shakespeare  stood  on  Plato's  shoulders. 
And  Bernard  Shaw  found  Plato  from  his  point 
of  view  so  much  more  advanced  than  Shake- 
speare that  he  decided  in  desperation  that  all 
three  were  equal. 

Such  failure  as  has  partially  attended  the 
idea  of  human  equality  is  very  largely  due  to 
the  fact  that  no  party  in  the  modern  state  has 
heartily  believed  in  it.  Tories  and  Radicals 
have  both  assumed  that  one  set  of  men  were  in 
essentials  superior  to  mankind.  The  only 
difference  was  that  the  Tory  superiority  was 
a  superiority  of  place;  while  the  Radical 
superiority  is  a  superiority  of  time.  The 
great  objection  to  Shaw  being  on  Shakespeare's 
shoulders  is  a  consideration  for  the  sensations 
and  personal  dignity  of  Shakespeare.  It  is  a 
democratic  objection  to  anyone  being  on  any- 
one else's  shoulders.  Eternal  human  nature 
refuses  to  submit  to  a  man  who  rules  merely 

202 


The  Philosopher 


by  right  of  birth.  To  rule  by  right  of  century 
is  to  rule  by  right  of  birth.  Shaw  found  his 
nearest  kinsman  in  remote  Athens,  his  remotest 
enemies  in  the  closest  historical  proximity; 
and.Jhe  began  to  see  the  enormous  average  and 
the  vast  level  of  mankindx.  If  progress  swung 
constantly  between  such  extremes  it  could  not 
be  progress  at  all.  The  paradox  was  sharp 
but  undeniable;  if  life  had  such  continual  ups 
and  downs,  it  was  upon  the  whole  flat.  With 
characteristic  sincerity  and  love  of  sensation  he 
had  no  sooner  seen  this  than  he  hastened  to 
declare  it.  In  the  teeth  of  all  his  previous 
pronouncements  he  emphasised  and  re-em- 
phasised in  print  that  man  had  not  progressed 
at  all;  that  ninety-nine  hundredths  of  a  man 
in  a  cave  were  the  same  as  ninety-nine 
hundredths  of  a  man  in  a  suburban  villa. 

It  is  characteristic  of  him  to  say  that  he 
rushed  into  print  with  a  frank  confession  of 
the  failure  of  his  old  theory.  But  it  is  also 
characteristic  of  him  that  he  rushed  into  print 
also  with  a  new  alternative  theory,  quite  as 
definite,  quite  as  confident,  and,  if  one  may 
put  it  so,  quite  as  infallible  as  the  old  one. 
Progress  had  never  happened  hitherto,  because 
it  had  been  sought  solely  through  education. 
Education   was    rubbish.      "Fancy,"    said    he, 

203 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


"trying  to  produce  a  greyhound  or  a  race- 
horse by  education!'*  The  man  of  the  future 
must  not  be  taught;  he  must  be  bred.  This 
notion  of  producing  superior  human  beings  by 
the  methods  of  the  stud-farm  had  often  been 
urged  though  its  difficulties  had  never  been 
cleared  up.  I  mean  its  practical  difficulties; 
its  moral  difficulties,  or  rather  impossibilities, 
for  any  animal  fit  to  be  called  a  man  need 
scarcely  be  discussed.  But  even  as  a  scheme 
it  had  never  been  made  clear.  The  first  and 
most  obvious  objection  to  it  of  course  is  this: 
that  if  you  are  to  breed  men  as  pigs,  you 
require  some  overseer  who  is  as  much  more 
subtle  than  a  man  as  a  man  is  more  subtle 
than  a  pig.  Such  an  individual  is  not  easy  to 
find. 

<  It  was,  however,  in  the  heat  of  these  three 
things,  the  decline  of  his  merely  destructive 
realism,  the  discovery  of  Nietzsche,  and  the 
abandonment  of  the  idea  of  a  progressive 
education  of  mankind,  that  he  attempted  what 
is  not  necessarily  his  best,  but  certainly  his 
most  important  work.  The  two  things  are 
by  no  means  necessarily  the  same.  The  most 
important  work  of  Milton  is  Paradise  Lost; 
his  best  work  is  Lycidas,  There  are  other 
places    in    which    Shaw's    argument    is    more 

204 


The  Philosopher 


fascinating  or  his  wit  more  startling  than  in 
Man  and  Superman;  there  are  other  plays 
that  he  has  made  more  brilliant.  But  I  am 
sure  that  there  is  no  other  play  that  he  wished 
to  make  more  brilliant.  I  will  not  say  that  he 
is  in  this  case  more  serious  than  elsewhere; 
for  the  word  serious  is  a  double-meaning  and 
double-dealing  word,  a  traitor  in  the  diction- 
ary. It  sometimes  means  solemn,  and  it  some- 
times means  sincere.  A  ver}^  short  experience 
of  private  and  public  Kfe  will  be  enough  to 
prove  that  the  most  solemn  people  are  generally 
the  most  insincere.  A  somewhat  more  delicate 
and  detailed  consideration  will  show  also  that 
the  most  sincere  men  are  generally  not  solemn; 
and  of  these  is  Bernard  Shaw.  But  if  we  use 
the  word  serious  in  the  old  and  Latin  sense 
of  the  word  "grave,"  which  means  weighty  or 
valid,  full  of  substance,  then  we  may  say 
without  any  hesitation  that  this  is  the  most 
serious  play  of  the  most  serious  man  alive. 

The  outline  of  the  play  is,  I  suppose,  by  this 
time  sufficiently  well  known.  It  has  two  main 
philosophic  motives.  The  first  is  that  what  he 
calls  the  life-force  (the  old  infidels  called  it 
Nature,  which  seem's  a  neater  word,  and  nobody 
knows  the  meaning  of  either  of  them)  desires 
above  all   things   to   make   suitable   marriages, 

205 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


to  produce  a  purer  and  prouder  race,  or  even- 
tually to  produce  a  Superman.  The  second  is 
that  in  this  effecting  of  racial  marriages  the 
woman  is  a  more  conscious  agent  than  the 
man.  In  short,  that  woman  disposes  a  long 
time  before  man  proposes.  In  this  play,  there- 
fore, woman  is  made  the  pursuer  and  man  the 
pursued.  It  cannot  be  denied,  I  think,  that 
in  this  matter  Shaw  is  handicapped  by  his 
habitual  hardness  of  touch,  by  his  lack  of 
sympathy  with  the  romance  of  which  he  writes, 
and  to  a  certain  extent  even  by  his  own 
integrity  and  right  conscience.  Whether  the 
man  hunts  the  woman  or  the  woman  the  man, 
at  least  it  should  be  a  splendid  pagan  hunt; 
but  Shaw  is  not  a  sporting  man.  Nor  is  he 
a  pagan,  but  a  Puritan.  He  cannot  recover 
the  impartiality  of  paganism  which  allowed 
Diana  to  propose  to  Endymion  without  think- 
ing any  the  worse  of  her.  The  result  is  that 
while  he  makes  Anne,  the  woman  who  marries 
his  hero,  a  really  powerful  and  convincing 
woman,  he  can  only  do  it  by  making  her  a 
highly  objectionable  woman.  She  is  a  liar  and 
a  bully,  not  from  sudden  fear  or  excruciating 
dilemma;  she  is  a  liar  and  a  bully  in  grain; 
she  has  no  truth  or  magnanimity  in  her.  The 
more  we  know  that  she  is  real,  the  more  we 

206 


The  Philosopher 


know  that  she  is  vile.  In  short,  Bernard 
Shaw  is  still  haunted  with  his  old  impotence 
of  the  unromantic  WTiter;  he  cannot  imagine 
the  main  motives  of  human  life  from  the 
inside.  We  are  convinced  successfully  that 
Anne  wishes  to  marry  Tanner,  but  in  the  very 
process  we  lose  all  power  of  conceiving  why 
Tanner  should  ever  consent  to  marry  Anne. 
A  writer  with  a  more  romantic  strain  in  him 
might  have  imagined  a  woman  choosing  her 
lover  without  shamelessness  and  magnetising 
him  without  fraud.  Even  if  the  first  move- 
ment were  feminine,  it  need  hardly  be  a 
movement  like  this.  In  truth,  of  course,  the 
two  sexes  have  their  two  methods  of  attraction, 
and  in  some  of  the  happiest  cases  they  are 
almost  simultaneous.  But  even  on  the  most 
cynical  showing  they  need  not  be  mixed  up. 
It  is  one  thing  to  say  that  the  mousetrap 
is  not  there  by  accident.  It  is  another  to  say 
(in  the  face  of  ocular  experience)  that  the 
mousetrap  runs  after  the  mouse. 

But  whenever  Shaw  shows  the  Puritan 
hardness  or  even  the  Puritan  cheapness,  he 
shows  something  also  of  the  Puritan  nobility, 
of  the  idea  that  sacrifice  is  really  a  frivolity 
in  the  face  of  a  great  purpose.  The  reason- 
ableness of  Calvin   and   his   followers  will   by 

207 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


the  mercy  of  heaven  be  at  last  washed  away; 
but  their  unreasonableness  will  remain  an 
eternal  splendour.  Long  after  we  have  let 
drop  the  fancy  that  Protestantism  was  rational 
it  will  be  its  glory  that  it  was  fanatical.  So 
it  is  with  Shaw.  ^To  make  Anne  a  real 
woman,  even  a  dangerous  woman,  he  would 
need  to  be  something  stranger  and  softer  than 
Bernard  Shaw.  .  But  though  I  always  argue 
with  him  whenever  he  argues,  I  confess  that 
he  always  conquers  me  in  the  one  or  two 
moments  when  he  is  emotional. 

There  is  one  really  noble  moment  when 
Anne  offers  for  all  her  cynical  husband-hunting 
the  only  defence  that  is  really  great  enough  to 
cover  it.  "It  will  not  be  all  happiness  for  me. 
Perhaps  death."  And  the  man  rises  also  at 
that  real  crisis,  saying,  "Oh,  that  clutch  holds 
and  hurts.  What  have  you  grasped  in  me  ^  Is 
there  a  father's  heart  as  well  as  a  mother's?'' 
That  seems  to  me  actually  great;  I  do  not  like 
either  of  the  characters  an  atom  more  than 
formerly;  but  I  can  see  shining  and  shaking 
through  them  at  that  instant  the  splendour  of 
the  God  that  made  them  and  of  the  image  of  God 
who  wrote  their  story. 

A  logician  is  like  a   liar  in  many  respects, 

208 


The  Philosopher 


but  chiefly  in  the  fact  that  he  should  have 
a  good  memory.  That  cutting  and  inquisi- 
tive style  which  Bernard  Shaw  has  always 
adopted  carries  with  it  an  inevitable  criticism. 
And  it  cannot  be  denied  that  this  new  theory 
of  the  supreme  importance  of  sound  sexual 
union,  wrought  by  any  means,  is  hard  logic- 
ally to  reconcile  with  Shaw's  old  diatribes 
against  sentimentalism  and  operatic  romance. 
If  Nature  wishes  primarily  to  entrap  us  into 
sexual  union,  then  all  the  means  of  sexual 
attraction,  even  the  most  maudlin  or  theat- 
rical, are  justified  at  one  stroke.  The  guitar 
of  the  troubadour  is  as  practical  as  the  plough- 
share of  the  husbandman.  The  waltz  in  the 
ballroom  is  as  serious  as  the  debate  in  the 
parish  council.  The  justification  of  Anne,  as 
the  potential  mother  of  Superman,  is  really 
the  justification  of  all  the  humbugs  and  sen- 
timentalists whom  Shaw  had  been  denouncing 
as  a  dramatic  critic  and  as  a  dramatist  since 
the  beginning  of  his  career.  It  was  to  no 
purpose  that  the  earlier  Bernard  Shaw  said 
that  romance  was  all  moonshine.  The  moon- 
shine that  ripens  love  is  now  as  practical  as 
the  sunshine  that  ripens  corn.  It  was  vain 
to  say  that  sexual  chivalry  was  all  rot;  it 
might  be  as  rotten  as  manure — and  also  as 
N  209 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


fertile.  It  is  vain  to  call  first  love  a  fiction; 
it  may  be  as  fictitious  as  the  ink  of  the  cuttle 
or  the  doubling  of  the  hare;  as  fictitious,  as 
efficient,  and  as  indispensable.  It  is  vain  to 
call  it  a  self-deception;  Schopenhauer  said 
that  all  existence  was  a  self-deception;  and 
Shaw's  only  further  comment  seems  to  be 
that  it  is  right  to  be  deceived.  To  Man 
and  Superman,  as  to  all  his  plays,  the 
author  attaches  a  most  fascinating  preface  at 
the  beginning.  But  I  really  think  that  he 
ought  also  to  attach  a  hearty  apology  at  the 
end;  an  apology  to  all  the  minor  dramatists 
or  preposterous  actors  whom  he  had  cursed 
for  romanticism  in  his  youth.  Whenever  he 
objected  to  an  actress  for  ogling  she  might 
reasonably  reply,  "But  this  is  how  I  support 
my  friend  Anne  in  her  sublime  evolutionary 
effort."  Whenever  he  laughed  at  an  old- 
fashioned  actor  for  ranting,  the  actor  might 
answer,  "My  exaggeration  is  not  more  absurd 
than  the  tail  of  a  peacock  or  the  swagger  of 
a  cock;  it  is  the  way  I  preach  the  great  fruit- 
ful He  of  the  Hfe-force  that  I  am  a  very  fine 
fellow."  We  have  remarked  the  end  of  Shaw's 
campaign  in  favour  of  progress.  This  ought 
really  to  have  been  the  end  of  his  campaign 
against  romance.     All  the  tricks  of  love  that 

210 


The  Philosopher 


he  called  artificial  become  natural;  because  they 
become  Nature.  All  the  lies  of  love  become 
truths;  indeed  they  become  the  Truth. 

The  minor  things  of  the  play  contain  some 
thunderbolts  of  good  thinking.  Throughout 
this  brief  study  I  have  deliberately  not  dwelt 
upon  mere  wit,  because  in  anything  of  Shaw's 
that  may  be  taken  for  granted.  It  is  enough 
to  say  that  this  play  which  is  full  of  his  most 
serious  quality  is  as  full  as  any  of  his  minor  sort 
of  success.  In  a  more  solid  sense  two  important 
facts  stand  out:  the  first  is  the  character  of 
the  young  American;  the  other  is  the  character 
of  Straker,  the  chauffeur.  In  these  Shaw  has 
realised  and  made  vivid  two  most  important 
facts.  First,  that  America  is  not  intellectually 
a  go-ahead  country,  but  both  for  good  and 
evil  an  old-fashioned  one.  It  is  full  of  stale 
culture  and  ancestral  simplicity,  just  as  Shaw's 
young  millionaire  quotes  Macaulay  and  piously 
worships  his  wife.  Second,  he  has  pointed 
out  in  the  character  of  Straker  that  there 
has  arisen  in  our  midst  a  new  class  that 
has  education  without  breeding.  Straker  is 
the  man  who  has  ousted  the  hansom-cabman, 
having  neither  his  coarseness  nor  his  kindli- 
ness. Great  sociological  credit  is  due  to  the 
man  who  has  first  clearly  observed  that  Straker 

211 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


has  appeared.  How  anybody  can  profess  for  a 
moment  to  be  glad  that  he  has  appeared,  I  do 
not  attempt  to  conjecture. 

Appended  to  the  play  is  an  entertain- 
ing though  somewhat  mysterious  document 
called  "The  Revolutionist's  Handbook."  It 
contains  many  very  sound  remarks;  this,  for 
example,  which  I  cannot  too  much  applaud:  "If 
you  hit  your  child,  be  sure  that  you  hit  him 
in  anger."  If  that  principle  had  been  pro- 
perly understood,  we  should  have  had  less  of 
Shaw's  sociological  friends  and  their  meddHng 
with  the  habits  and  instincts  of  the  poor. 
But  among  the  fragments  of  advice  also  occurs 
the  following  suggestive  and  even  alluring 
remark:  "Every  man  over  forty  is  a  scoun- 
drel." On  the  first  personal  opportunity  I 
asked  the  author  of  this  remarkable  axiom 
what  it  meant.  I  gathered  that  what  it  really 
meant  was  something  like  this:  that  every 
man  over  forty  had  been  all  the  essential  use 
that  he  was  likely  to  be,  and  was  therefore  in 
a  manner  a  parasite.  It  is  gratifying  to  reflect 
that  Bernard  Shaw  has  sufficiently  answered 
his  own  epigram  by  continuing  to  pour  out 
treasures  both  of  truth  and  folly  long  after 
this  allotted  time.  But  if  the  epigram  might 
be    interpreted    in    a    rather    looser    style    as 

212 


The  Philosopher 


meaning  that  past  a  certain  point  a  man's 
work  takes  on  its  final  character  and  does  not 
greatly  change  the  nature  of  its  merits,  it 
may  certainly  be  said  that  with  Man  and 
Superman,  Shaw  reaches  that  stage.  The 
two  plays  that  have  followed  it,  though  of 
very  great  interest  in  themselves,  do  not 
require  any  revaluation  of,  or  indeed  any 
addition  to,  our  summary  of  his  genius  and 
success.  They  are  both  in  a  sense  casts 
back  to  his  primary^  energies;  the  first  in  a 
controversial  and  the  second  in  a  technical 
sense.  Neither  need  prevent  our  saying  that 
^the  moment  when  John  Tanner  and  Anne 
agree  that  it  is  doom  for  him  and  death  for 
her  and  life  only  for  the  thing  unborn,  is  the 
peak  of  his  utterance  as  a  prophet.   - 

The  two  important  plays  that  he  has  since 
given  us  are  The  Doctor  s  Dilemma  and  Getting 
Married.  The  first  is  as  regards  its  most 
amusing  and  effective  elements  a  throw-back 
to  his  old  game  of  guying  the  men  of  science. 
It  was  a  very  good  game,  and  he  was  an 
admirable  player.  The  actual  story  of  the 
Doctor  s  Dile?nma  itself  seems  to  me  less 
poignant  and  important  than  the  things  with 
which  Shaw  had  lately  been  dealing.  First  of 
all,   as   has   been   said,   Shaw  has   neither  the 

213 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


kind  of  justice  nor  the  kind  of  weakness  that 
goes  to  make  a  true  problem.  We  cannot  feel 
the  Doctor's  Dilemma,  because  we  cannot 
really  fancy  Bernard  Shaw  being  in  a  dilemma. 
His  mind  is  both  fond  of  abruptness  and  fond 
of  finality;  he  always  makes  up  his  mind 
when  he  knows  the  facts  and  sometimes  before. 
Moreover,  this  particular  problem  (though 
Shaw  is  certainly,  as  we  shall  see,  nearer  to 
pure  doubt  about  it  than  about  anything  else) 
does  not  strike  the  critic  as  being  such  an 
exasperating  problem  after  all.  An  artist  of 
vast  power  and  promise,  who  is  also  a  scamp 
of  vast  profligacy  and  treachery,  has  a  chance 
of  life  if  specially  treated  for  a  special  disease. 
The  modern  doctors  (and  even  the  modern 
dramatist)  are  in  doubt  whether  he  should  be 
specially  favoured  because  he  is  aesthetically 
important  or  specially  disregarded  because  he 
is  ethically  anti-social.  They  see-saw  between 
the  two  despicable  modern  doctrines,  one  that 
geniuses  should  be  worshipped  like  idols  and 
the  other  that  criminals  should  be  merely 
wiped  out  like  germs.  That  both  clever  men 
and  bad  men  ought  to  be  treated  like  men 
does  not  seem  to  occur  to  them.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  in  these  affairs  of  life  and  death  one 
never  does  think  of  such  distinctions.    Nobody 

214 


The  Philosopher 


does  shout  out  at  sea,  "  Bad  citizen  over- 
board!" I  should  recommend  the  doctor  in 
his  dilemma  to  do  exactly  what  I  am  sure  any 
decent  doctor  would  do  without  any  dilemma 
at  all:  to  treat  the  man  simply  as  a  man,  and 
give  him  no  more  and  no  less  favour  than 
he  would  to  anybody  else.  In  short,  I  am 
sure  a  practical  physician  would  drop  all  these 
visionarv,  unworkable  modern  dreams  about 
type  and  criminology  and  go  back  to  the  plain 
business-like  facts  of  the  French  Revolution 
and  the  Rights  of  Man. 

The  other  play.  Getting  Married^  is  a  point 
in  Shaw's  career,  but  only  as  a  play,  not,  as 
usual,  as  a  heresy.  It  is  nothing  but  a  con- 
versation about  marriage;  and  one  cannot 
agree  or  disagree  with  the  view  of  marriage, 
because  all  views  are  given  which  are  held  by 
anybody,  and  some  (I  should  think)  which  are 
held  by  nobody.  But  its  technical  quality  is 
of  some  importance  in  the  life  of  its  author. 
It  is  worth  consideration  as  a  play,  because  it 
is  not  a  play  at  all.  It  marks  the  culmination 
and  completeness  of  that  victory  of  Bernard 
Shaw  over  the  British  public,  or  rather  over 
their  official  representatives,  of  which  I  have 
spoken.  Shaw  had  fought  a  long  fight  with 
business    men,    those    incredible    people,    who 

215 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


assured  him  that  it  was  useless  to  have  wit 
without  murders,  and  that  a  good  joke,  which 
is  the  most  popular  thing  everywhere  else,  was 
quite  unsalable  in  the  theatrical  world.  In 
spite  of  this  he  had  conquered  by  his  wit  and 
his  good  dialogue;  and  by  the  time  of  which 
we  now  speak  he  was  victorious  and  secure. 
All  his  plays  were  being  produced  as  a  matter 
of  course  in  England  and  as  a  matter  of  the 
fiercest  fashion  and  enthusiasm  in  America 
and  Germany.  No  one  who  knows  the  nature 
of  the  man  will  doubt  that  under  such  cir- 
cumstances his  first  act  would  be  to  produce 
his  wit  naked  and  unashamed.  He  had  been 
told  that  he  could  not  support  a  slight  play  by 
mere  dialogue.  He  therefore  promptly  pro- 
duced mere  dialogue  without  the  slightest 
play  for  it  to  support.  Getting  Married  is  no 
more  a  play  than  Cicero's  dialogue  De  A  mi  did, 
and  not  half  so  much  a  play  as  Wilson's 
Nodes  Amhrosiance.  But  though  it  is  not  a 
play,  it  was  played,  and  played  successfully. 
Everyone  who  went  into  the  theatre  felt  that 
he  was  only  eavesdropping  at  an  accidental 
conversation.  But  the  conversation  was  so 
sparkling  and  sensible  that  he  went  on  eaves- 
dropping. This,  I  think,  as  it  is  the  final 
play    of   Shaw,    is    also,    and    fitly,    his    final 

216 


The  Philosopher 


triumph.  He  is  a  good  dramatist  and  some- 
times even  a  great  dramatist.  But  the  occa- 
sions when  we  get  ghmpses  of  him  as  really  a 
great  man  are  on  these  occasions  when  he  is 
utterly  undramatic. 

From  first  to  last  Bernard  Shaw  has  been 
nothing  but  a  conversationalist.  It  is  not  a 
slur  to  say  so;  Socrates  was  one,  and  even 
Christ  Himself.  He  differs  from  that  divine 
and  that  human  prototype  in  the  fact  that,  like 
most  modern  people,  he  does  to  some  extent 
talk  in  order  to  find  out  what  he  thinks; 
whereas  they  knew  it  beforehand.  But  he  has 
the  virtues  that  go  with  the  talkative  man; 
one  of  which  is  humility.  You  will  hardly 
ever  find  a  really  proud  man  talkative;  he  is 
afraid  of  talking  too  much.  Bernard  Shaw 
offered  himself  to  the  world  with  only  one 
great  qualification,  that  he  could  talk  honestly 
and  well.  He  did  not  speak;  he  talked  to  a 
crowd.  He  did  not  write;  he  talked  to 
a  typewriter.  He  did  not  really  construct  a 
play;  he  talked  through  ten  mouths  or  masks 
instead  of  through  one.  His  literary  power 
and  progress  began  in  casual  conversations — 
and  it  seems  to  me  supremely  right  that  it 
should  end  in  one  great  and  casual  conversa- 
tion.    His  last  play  is  nothing  but  garrulous 

217 


George  Bernard  Shaiv 


talking,  that  great  thing  called  gossip.  And  I 
am  happy  to  say  that  the  play  has  been  as 
efficient  and  successful  as  talk  and  gossip 
have  always  been  among  the  children  of  men. 
Of  his  life  in  these  later  years  I  have  made 
no  pretence  of  telling  even  the  little  that  there 
is  to  tell.  Those  who  regard  him  as  a  mere 
self-advertising  egotist  may  be  surprised  to 
hear  that  there  is  perhaps  no  man  of  whose 
private  life  less  could  be  positively  said  by  an 
outsider.  Even  those  who  know  him  can 
make  little  but  a  conjecture  of  what  has  lain 
behind  this  splendid  stretch  of  intellectual 
self-expression;  I  only  make  my  conjecture 
like  the  rest.  I  think  that  the  first  great 
turning-point  in  Shaw's  life  (after  the  early 
things  of  which  I  have  spoken,  the  taint  of 
drink  in  the  teetotal  home,  or  the  first  fight 
with  poverty)  was  the  deadly  illness  which  fell 
upon  him,  at  the  end  of  his  first  flashing  career 
as  a  Saturday  Reviewer.  I  know  it  would 
goad  Shaw  to  madness  to  suggest  that  sickness 
could  have  softened  him.  That  is  why  I 
suggest  it.  But  I  say  for  his  comfort  that 
I  think  it  hardened  him  also;  if  that  can  be 
called  hardening  which  is  only  the  strength- 
ening of  our  souls  to  meet  some  dreadful 
reality.     At  least  it  is  certain  that  the  larger 

218 


The  Philosopher 


spiritual  ambitions,  the  desire  to  find  a  faith 
and  found  a  church,  come  after  that  time. 
I  also  mention  it  because  there  is  hardly  any- 
thing else  to  mention;  his  life  is  singularly 
free  from  landmarks,  while  his  literature  is  so 
oddly  full  of  surprises.  His  marriage  to 
Miss  Payne-Townsend,  which  occurred  not 
long  after  his  illness,  was  one  of  those  quite 
successful  things  which  are  utterly  silent. 
The  placidity  of  his  married  life  may  be  suffi- 
ciently indicated  by  saying  that  (as  far  as  I 
can  make  out)  the  most  important  events  in  it 
were  rows  about  the  Executive  of  the  Fabian 
Society.  If  such  ripples  do  not  express  a  still 
and  lake-like  life,  I  do  not  know  what  would. 
Honestly,  the  only  thing  in  his  later  career 
that  can  be  called  an  event  is  the  stand  made 
by  Shaw  at  the  Fabians  against  the  sudden 
assault  of  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells,  which,  after  scenes 
of  splendid  exasperations,  ended  in  Wells'  re- 
signation. There  was  another  slight  ruffling  of 
the  calm  when  Bernard  Shaw  said  some  quite 
sensible  things  about  Sir  Henry  Irving.  But 
on  the  whole  we  confront  the  composure  of 
one  who  has  come  into  his  own. 

The  method  of  his  life  has  remained  mostly 
unchanged.  And  there  is  a  great  deal  of 
method   in   his   life;   I   can   hear  some   people 

219 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


murmuring  something  about  method  in  his 
madness.  He  is  not  only  neat  and  business- 
like; but,  unHke  some  literary  men  I  know, 
does  not  conceal  the  fact.  Having  all  the 
talents  proper  to  an  author,  he  delights  to 
prove  that  he  has  also  all  the  talents  proper  to 
a  publisher;  or  even  to  a  publisher's  clerk. 
Though  many  looking  at  his  light  brown 
clothes  would  call  him  a  Bohemian,  he  really 
hates  and  despises  Bohemianism;  in  the  sense 
that  he  hates  and  despises  disorder  and  unclean- 
ness  and  irresponsibility.  All  that  part  of  him 
is  peculiarly  normal  and  efficient.  He  gives 
good  advice;  he  always  answers  letters,  and 
answers  them  in  a  decisive  and  very  legible 
hand.  He  has  said  himself  that  the  only 
educational  art  that  he  thinks  important  is 
that  of  being  able  to  jump  off  tram-cars  at  the 
proper  moment.  Though  a  rigid  vegetarian, 
he  is  quite  regular  and  rational  in  his  meals; 
and  though  he  detests  sport,  he  takes  quite 
sufficient  exercise.  While  he  has  always  made 
a  mock  of  science  in  theory,  he  is  by  nature 
prone  to  meddle  with  it  in  practice.  He  is 
fond  of  photographing,  and  even  more  fond  of 
being  photographed.  He  maintained  (in  one 
of  his  moments  of  mad  modernity)  that  photo- 
graphy was  a  finer  thing  than  portrait-painting, 

220 


The  Philosopher 


more  exquisite  and  more  imaginative;  he 
urged  the  characteristic  argument  that  none 
of  his  own  photographs  were  like  each  other 
or  Hke  him.  But  he  would  certainly  wash 
the  chemicals  off  his  hands  the  instant  after  an 
experiment;  just  as  he  would  wash  the  blood 
off  his  hands  the  instant  after  a  Socialist 
massacre.  He  cannot  endure  stains  or  accre- 
tions; he  is  of  that  temperament  which  feels 
tradition  itself  to  be  a  coat  of  dust;  whose 
temptation  it  is  to  feel  nothing  but  a  sort 
of  foul  accumulation  or  living  disease  even  in 
the  creeper  upon  the  cottage  or  the  moss  upon 
the  grave.  So  thoroughly  are  his  tastes  those 
of  the  civilised  modern  man  that  if  it  had  not 
been  for  the  fire  in  him  of  justice  and  anger 
he  might  have  been  the  most  trim  and  modern 
among  the  millions  whom  he  shocks:  and  his 
bicycle  and  brown  hat  have  been  no  menace  in 
Brixton.  But  God  sent  among  those  subur- 
bans one  who  was  a  prophet  as  well  as  a  sani- 
tary inspector.  He  had  every  qualification  for 
living  in  a  villa — except  the  necessary  indiffer- 
ence to  his  brethren  living  in  pigstyes.  But 
for  the  small  fact  that  he  hates  with  a  sickening 
hatred  the  hypocrisy  and  class  cruelty,  he 
would  really  accept  and  admire  the  bathroom 
and  the  bicycle  and  asbestos-stove,  having  no 

221 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


memory  of  rivers  or  of  roaring  fires.  In  these 
things,  like  Mr.  Straker,  he  is  the  New  Man. 
But  for  his  great  soul  he  might  have  accepted 
modern  civilisation;  it  vs^as  a  wonderful  escape. 
This  man  whom  men  so  foolishly  call  crazy 
and  anarchic  has  really  a  dangerous  affinity  to 
the  fourth-rate  perfections  of  our  provincial 
and  Protestant  civilisation.  He  might  even 
have  been  respectable  if  he  had  had  less  self- 
respect. 

His  fulfilled  fame  and  this  tone  of  repose 
and  reason  in  his  life,  together  with  the  large 
circle  of  his  private  kindness  and  the  regard  of 
his  fellow-artists,  should  permit  us  to  end  the 
record  in  a  tone  of  almost  patriarchal  quiet. 
If  I  wished  to  complete  such  a  picture  I  could 
add  many  touches:  that  he  has  consented  to 
wear  evening  dress;  that  he  has  supported 
the  Times  Book  Club;  and  that  his  beard  has 
turned  grey;  the  last  to  his  regret,  as  he 
wanted  it  to  remain  red  till  they  had  completed 
colour-photography.  He  can  mix  with  the 
most  conservative  statesmen;  his  tone  grows 
continuously  more  gentle  in  the  matter  of 
religion.  It  would  be  easy  to  end  with  the 
lion  lying  down  with  the  lamb,  the  wild  Irish- 
man tamed  or  taming  everybody,  Shaw  recon- 

222 


The  Philosopher 


died  to  the  British  pubHc  as  the  British  public 
is  certainly  largely  reconciled  to  Shaw. 

But  as  I  put  these  last  papers  together, 
having  finished  this  rude  study,  I  hear  a  piece 
of  news.  His  latest  play,  The  Showing  Up  of 
Blanco  Posnet,  has  been  forbidden  by  the 
Censor.  As  far  as  I  can  discover,  it  has  been 
forbidden  because  one  of  the  characters  pro- 
fesses a  belief  in  God  and  states  his  conviction 
that  God  has  got  him.  This  is  wholesome; 
this  is  Hke  one  crack  of  thunder  in  a  clear 
sky.  Not  so  easily  does  the  prince  of  this 
world  forgive.  Shaw's  rehgious  training  and 
instinct  is  not  mine,  but  in  all  honest  religion 
there  is  something  that  is  hateful  to  the 
prosperous  compromise  of  our  time.  You 
are  free  in  our  time  to  say  that  God  does  not 
exist;  you  are  free  to  say  that  He  exists  and 
is  evil;  you  are  free  to  say  (like  poor  old 
Renan)  that  He  would  like  to  exist  if  He  could. 
You  may  talk  of  God  as  a  metaphor  or  a 
mystification;  you  may  water  Him  down  with 
gallons  of  long  words,  or  boil  Him  to  the  rags 
of  metaphysics;  and  it  is  not  merely  that 
nobody  punishes,  but  nobody  protests.  But 
if  you  speak  of  God  as  a  fact,  as  a  thing  like 
a  tiger,  as  a  reason  for  changing  one's  con- 
duct,   then   the    modern   world   will   stop   you 

223 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


somehow  if  it  can.  We  are  long  past  talking 
about  whether  an  unbeliever  should  be 
punished  for  being  irreverent.  It  is  now 
thought  irreverent  to  be  a  believer.  I  end 
where  I  began:  it  is  the  old  Puritan  in  Shaw 
that  jars  the  modern  world  like  an  electric 
shock.  That  vision  with  which  I  meant  to 
end,  that  vision  of  culture  and  common-sense, 
of  red  brick  and  brown  flannel,  of  the  modern 
clerk  broadened  enough  to  embrace  Shaw  and 
Shaw  softened  enough  to  embrace  the  clerk, 
all  that  vision  of  a  new  London  begins  to  fade 
and  alter.  The  red  brick  begins  to  burn  red- 
hot;  and  the  smoke  from  all  the  chimneys  has 
a  strange  smell.  I  find  myself  back  in  the 
fumes  in  which  I  started.  .  .  .  Perhaps  I  have 
been  misled  by  small  modernities.  Perhaps 
what  I  have  called  fastidiousness  is  a  divine 
fear.  Perhaps  what  I  have  called  coldness  is 
a  predestinate  and  ancient  endurance.  The 
vision  of  the  Fabian  villas  grows  fainter  and 
fainter,  until  I  see  only  a  void  place  across 
which  runs  Bunyan's  Pilgrim  with  his  fingers 
in  his  ears. 

Bernard  Shaw  has  occupied  much  of  his  life 
in  trying  to  elude  his  followers.  The  fox  has 
enthusiastic  followers,  and  Shaw  seems  to 
regard  his  in  much  the  same  way.     This  man 


The  Philosopher 


whom  men  accuse  of  bidding  for  applause 
seems  to  me  to  shrink  even  from  assent.  If 
you  agree  with  Shaw  he  is  very  Hkely  to 
contradict  you;  I  have  contradicted  Shaw 
throughout,  that  is  why  I  come  at  last  almost 
to  agree  with  him.  His  critics  have  accused 
him  of  vulgar  self-advertisement;  in  his 
relation  to  his  followers  he  seems  to  me 
rather  marked  with  a  sort  of  mad  modesty. 
He  seems  to  wish  to  fly  from  agreement,  to 
have  as  few  followers  as  possible.  All  this 
reaches  back,  I  think,  to  the  three  roots  from 
which  this  meditation  grew.  It  is  partly  the 
mere  impatience  and  irony  of  the  Irishman. 
It  is  partly  the  thought  of  the  Calvinist  that 
the  host  of  God  should  be  thinned  rather  than 
thronged;  that  Gideon  must  reject  soldiers 
rather  than  recruit  them.  And  it  is  partly, 
alas,  the  unhappy  Progressive  trying  to  be  in 
front  of  his  own  religion,  trying  to. destroy  his 
own  idol  and  even  to  desecrate  his  own  tomb. 
But  from  whatever  causes,  this  furious  escape 
from  popularity  has  involved  Shaw  in  some 
perversities  and  refinements  which  are  almost 
mere  insincerities,  and  which  make  it  neces- 
sary to  disentangle  the  good  he  has  done  from 
the  evil  in  this  dazzling  course.  I  will  at- 
tempt some  summary  by  stating  the  three 
O  225 


George  Bernard  SJiaw 


things  in  which  his  influence  seems  to  me 
thoroughly  good  and  the  three  in  which  it 
seems  bad.  But  for  the  pleasure  of  ending 
on  the  finer  note  I  will  speak  first  of  those 
that  seem  bad. 

The  primary  respect  in  which  Shaw  has 
been  a  bad  influence  is  that  he  has  encouraged 
fastidiousness.  He  has  made  men  dainty 
about  their  moral  meals.  This  is  indeed  the 
root  of  his  whole  objection  to  romance. 
Many  people  have  objected  to  romance  for 
being  too  airy  and  exquisite.  Shaw  objects 
to  romance  for  being  too  rank  and  coarse. 
Many  have  despised  romance  because  it  is 
unreal;  Shaw  really  hates  it  because  it  is  a 
great  deal  too  real.  Shaw  disHkes  romance  as 
he  dislikes  beef  and  beer,  raw  brandy  or  raw 
beefsteaks.  Romance  is  too  masculine  for 
his  taste.  You  will  find  throughout  his 
criticisms,  amid  all  their  truth,  their  wild 
justice  or  pungent  impartiality,  a  curious 
undercurrent  of  prejudice  upon  one  point: 
the  preference  for  the  refined  rather  than  the 
rude  or  ugly.  Thus  he  will  dislike  a  joke 
because  it  is  coarse  without  asking  if  it  is 
really  immoral.  He  objects  to  a  man  sitting 
down  on  his  hat,  whereas  the  austere  moralist 
should    only    object    to    his    sitting    down    on 

226 


The  Philosopher 


someone  else's  hat.  This  sensibility  is  barren 
because  it  is  universal.  It  is  useless  to  object 
to  man  being  made  ridiculous.  Man  is  born 
ridiculous,  as  can  easily  be  seen  :f  you  look  at 
him  soon  after  he  is  born.  It  is  grotesque  to 
drink  beer,  but  it  is  equally  grotesque  to 
drink  soda-water;  the  grotesqueness  lies  in 
the  act  of  filling  yourself  like  a  bottle  through 
a  hole.  It  is  undignified  to  walk  with  a 
drunken  stagger;  but  it  is  fairly  undignified 
to  walk  at  all,  for  all  walking  is  a  sort  of 
balancing,  and  there  is  always  in  the  human 
being  something  of  a  quadruped  on  its  hind 
legs.  I  do  not  say  he  would  be  more  digni- 
fied if  he  went  on  all  fours;  I  do  not  know 
that  he  ever  is  dignified  except  when  he  is  dead. 
We  shall  not  be  refined  till  we  are  refined  into 
dust.  Of  course  it  is  only  because  he  is  not 
wholly  an  animal  that  man  sees  he  is  a  rum 
animal;  and  if  man  on  his  hind  legs  is  in  an 
artificial  attitude,  it  is  only  because,  like  a  dog, 
he  is  begging  or  saying  thank  you. 

Everything  important  is  in  that  sense  absurd 
from  the  grave  baby  to  the  grinning  skull; 
everything  practical  is  a  practical  joke.  But 
throughout  Shaw's  comedies,  curiously  enough, 
there  is  a  certain  kicking  against  this  great 
doom  of  laughter.     For  instance,  it  is  the  first 

22/ 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


duty  of  a  man  who  is  in  love  to  make  a  fool 
of  himself;  but  Shaw's  heroes  always  seem  to 
flinch  from  this,  and  attempt,  in  airy,  philosophic 
revenge,  to  make  a  fool  of  the  woman  first. 
The  attempts  of  Valentine  and  Charteris  to 
divide  their  perceptions  from  their  desires,  and 
tell  the  woman  she  is  worthless  even  while 
trying  to  win  her,  are  sometimes  almost  tor- 
turing to  watch;  it  is  like  seeing  a  man  trying 
to  play  a  different  tune  with  each  hand.  I  fancy 
this  agony  is  not  only  in  the  spectator,  but  in 
the  dramatist  as  well.  It  is  Bernard  Shaw 
struggling  with  his  reluctance  to  do  anything 
so  ridiculous  as  make  a  proposal.  For  there 
are  two  types  of  great  humorist:  those  who 
love  to  see  a  man  absurd  and  those  who  hate 
to  see  him  absurd.  Of  the  first  kind  are  Rabe- 
lais and  Dickens;  of  the  second  kind  are 
Swift  and  Bernard  Shaw. 

So  far  as  Shaw  has  spread  or  helped  a  certain 
modern  reluctance  or  manvaise  honte  in  these 
grand  and  grotesque  functions  of  man  I  think 
he  has  definitely  done  harm.  He  has  much 
influence  among  the  young  men;  but  it  is  not 
an  influence  in  the  direction  of  keeping  them 
young.  One  cannot  imagine  him  inspiring 
any  of  his  followers  to  write  a  war-song  or 
a    drinking-song    or    a    love-song,    the    three 

228 


The  Philosopher 


forms  of  human  utterance  which  come  next  in 
nobility  to  a  prayer.  It  may  seem  odd  to 
say  that  the  net  effect  of  a  man  so  apparently 
impudent  will  be  to  make  men  shy.  But  it  is 
certainly  the  truth.  Shyness  is  always  the 
sign  of  a  divided  soul;  a  man  is  shy  because 
he  somehow  thinks  his  position  at  once  de- 
spicable and  important.  If  he  were  without 
humility  he  would  not  care;  and  if  he  were 
without  pride  he  would  not  care.  Now  the 
main  purpose  of  Shaw's  theoretic  teaching  is 
to  declare  that  we  ought  to  fulfil  these  great 
functions  of  life,  that  we  ought  to  eat  and 
drink  and  love.  But  the  main  tendency  of 
his  habitual  criticism  is  to  suggest  that  all  the 
sentiments,  professions,  and  postures  of  these 
things  are  not  only  comic  but  even  con- 
temptibly comic,  follies  and  almost  frauds. 
The  result  would  seem  to  be  that  a  race  of 
young  men  may  arise  who  do  all  these  things, 
but  do  them  awkwardly.  That  which  was  of 
old  a  free  and  hilarious  function  becomes  an 
important  and  embarrassing  necessity.  Let  us 
endure  all  the  pagan  pleasures  with  a  Christian 
patience.     Let  us  eat,  drink,  and  be  serious. 

The  second  of  the  two  points  on  which  I 
think  Shaw  has  done  definite  harm  is  this: 
that  he  has  (not  always  or  even  as  a  rule  in- 

229 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


tentionally)  increased  that  anarchy  of  thought 
which  is  ahvays  the  destruction  of  thought. 
Much  of  his  early  writing  has  encouraged 
among  the  modern  youth  that  most  pestilent 
of  all  popular  tricks  and  fallacies;  what  is 
called  the  argument  of  progress.  I  mean  this 
kind  of  thing.  Previous  ages  were  often,  alas, 
aristocratic  in  politics  or  clericalist  in  religion; 
but  they  were  always  democratic  in  philosophy; 
they  appealed  to  man,  not  to  particular  men. 
And  if  most  men  were  against  an  idea,  that 
was  so  far  against  it.  But  nowadays  that 
most  men  are  against  a  thing  is  thought  to 
be  in  its  favour;  it  is  vaguely  supposed  to 
show  that  some  day  most  men  will  be  for  it. 
If  a  man  says  that  cows  are  reptiles,  or  that 
Bacon  wrote  Shakespeare,  he  can  always  quote 
the  contempt  of  his  contemporaries  as  in  some 
mysterious  way  proving  the  complete  con- 
version of  posterity.  The  objections  to  this 
theory  scarcely  need  any  elaborate  indication. 
The  final  objection  to  it  is  that  it  amounts  to 
this:  say  anything,  however  idiotic,  and  you 
are  in  advance  of  your  age.  This  kind  of 
stuff  must  be  stopped.  The  sort  of  democrat 
who  appeals  to  the  babe  unborn  must  be 
classed  with  the  sort  of  aristocrat  who  appeals 
to     his     deceased     great-grandfather.        Both 

230 


The  Philosopher 


should  be  sharply  reminded  that  they  are 
appealing  to  individuals  whom  they  well  know 
to  be  at  a  disadvantage  in  the  matter  of  prompt 
and  witty  reply.  Now  although  Bernard 
Shaw  has  survived  this  simple  confusion,  he 
has  in  his  time  greatly  contributed  to  It.  If 
there  Is,  for  instance,  one  thing  that  is  really 
rare  in  Shaw  It  Is  hesitation.  He  makes  up 
his  mind  quicker  than  a  calculating  boy  or  a 
county  magistrate.  Yet  on  this  subject  of 
the  next  change  In  ethics  he  has  felt  hesi- 
tation, and  being  a  strictly  honest  man  has 
expressed  it. 

"I  know  no  harder  practical  question  than 
how  much  selfishness  one  ought  to  stand  from 
a  gifted  person  for  the  sake  of  his  gifts  or  on 
the  chance  of  his  being  right  In  the  long  run. 
The  Superman  will  certainly  come  like  a  thief 
in  the  night,  and  be  shot  at  accordingly;  but 
we  cannot  leave  our  property  wholly  un- 
defended on  that  account.  On  the  other  hand, 
we  cannot  ask  the  Superman  simply  to  add  a 
higher  set  of  virtues  to  current  respectable 
morals;  for  he  is  undoubtedly  going  to  empty 
a  good  deal  of  respectable  morality  out  like  so 
much  dirty  water,  and  replace  it  by  new  and 
strange  customs,  shedding  old  obligations  and 
accepting  new  and  heavier  ones.     Every  step 

231 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


of  his  progress  must  horrify  conventional 
people;  and  if  it  were  possible  for  even  the 
most  superior  man  to  march  ahead  all  the 
time,  every  pioneer  of  the  march  towards  the 
Superman  would  be  crucified." 

When  the  most  emphatic  man  alive,  a  man 
unmatched  in  violent  precision  of  statement, 
speaks  with  such  avowed  vagueness  and  doubt 
as  this,  it  is  no  wonder  if  all  his  more  weak- 
minded  followers  are  in  a  mere  whirlpool  of 
uncritical  and  unmeaning  innovation.  If  the 
superior  person  will  be  apparently  criminal, 
the  most  probable  result  is  simply  that  the 
criminal  person  will  think  himself  superior. 
A  very  slight  knowledge  of  human  nature 
is  required  in  the  matter.  If  the  Superman 
may  possibly  be  a  thief,  you  may  bet  your 
boots  that  the  next  thief  will  be  a  Superman. 
But  indeed  the  Supermen  (of  whom  I  have 
met  many)  have  generally  been  more  weak  in 
the  head  than  in  the  moral  conduct;  they 
have  simply  offered  the  first  fancy  which  occu- 
pied their  minds  as  the  new  morality.  I  fear 
that  Shaw  had  a  way  of  encouraging  these 
follies.  It  is  obvious  from  the  passage  I  have 
quoted  that  he  has  no  way  of  restraining 
them. 

The  truth  is  that  all  feeble  spirits  naturally 

232 


The  Philosopher 


live  in  the  future,  because  it  is  featureless;  it 
is  a  soft  job;  you  can  make  it  what  you  like. 
The  next  age  is  blank,  and  I  can  paint  it  freely 
with  my  favourite  colour.  It  requires  real 
courage  to  face  the  past,  because  the  past  is 
full  of  facts  which  cannot  be  got  over;  of 
men  certainly  wiser  than  we  and  of  things 
done  which  we  could  not  do.  I  know  I 
cannot  write  a  poem  as  good  as  Lycidas.  But 
it  is  always  easy  to  say  that  the  particular  sort 
of  poetry  I  can  write  will  be  the  poetry  of  the 
future. 

This  I  call  the  second  evil  influence  of 
Shaw:  that  he  has  encouraged  many  to  throw 
themselves  for  justification  upon  the  shapeless 
and  the  unknown.  In  this,  though  courageous 
himself,  he  has  encouraged  cowards,  and  though 
sincere  himself,  has  helped  a  mean  escape. 
The  third  evil  in  his  influence  can,  I  think,  be 
much  more  shortly  dealt  with.  He  has  to  a 
very  slight  extent,  but  still  perceptibly,  en- 
couraged a  kind  of  charlatanism  of  utterance 
among  those  who  possess  his  Irish  impudence 
without  his  Irish  virtue.  For  instance,  his 
amusing  trick  of  self-praise  is  perfectly  hearty 
and  humorous  in  him;  nay,  it  is  even 
humble;  for  to  confess  vanity  is  itself  humble. 
All  that  is  the  matter  with  the  proud  is  that 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


they  will  not  admit  that  they  are  vain.  There- 
fore when  Shaw  says  that  he  alone  is  able  to 
write  such  and  such  admirable  work,  or  that 
he  has  just  utterly  wiped  out  some  celebrated 
opponent,  I  for  one  never  feel  anything  offen- 
sive in  the  tone,  but,  indeed,  only  the  un- 
mistakable intonation  of  a  friend's  voice. 
But  I  have  noticed  among  younger,  harder, 
and  much  shallower  men  a  certain  disposition 
to  ape  this  insolent  ease  and  certitude,  and 
that  without  any  fundamental  frankness  or 
mirth.  So  far  the  influence  is  bad.  Egoism 
can  be  learnt  as  a  lesson  like  any  other  ''ism.'* 
It  is  not  so  easy  to  learn  an  Irish  accent  or  a 
good  temper.  In  its  lower  forms  the  thing 
becomes  a  most  unmilitary  trick  of  announcing 
the  victory  before  one  has  gained  it. 

When  one  has  said  those  three  things,  one 
has  said,  I  think,  all  that  can  be  said  by  way 
of  blaming  Bernard  Shaw.  It  is  significant  that 
he  was  never  blamed  for  any  of  these  things 
by  the  Censor.  Such  censures  as  the  attitude 
of  that  official  involves  may  be  dismissed  with 
a  very  light  sort  of  disdain.  To  represent 
Shaw  as  profane  or  provocatively  indecent  is 
not  a  matter  for  discussion  at  all;  it  is  a  dis- 
gusting criminal  libel  upon  a  particularly  re- 
spectable gentleman  of  the  middle  classes,  of 

234 


The  Philosopher 


refined  tastes  and  somewhat  Puritanical  views. 
But  while  the  negative  defence  of  Shaw  is 
easy,  the  just  praise  of  him  is  almost  as  com- 
plex as  it  is  necessary-;  and  I  shall  devote  the 
last  few  pages  of  this  book  to  a  triad  corre- 
sponding to  the  last  one — to  the  three  im- 
portant elements  in  which  the  work  of  Shaw 
has  been  good  as  well  as  great. 

In  the  first  place,  and  quite  apart  from  all 
particular  theories,  the  world  owes  thanks  to 
Bernard  Shaw  for  having  combined  being 
intelligent  with  being  intelligible.  He  has 
popularised  philosophy,  or  rather  he  has  re- 
popularised  it,  for  philosophy  is  always  popu- 
lar, except  in  peculiarly  corrupt  and  oligarchic 
ages  like  our  own.  We  have  passed  the  age 
of  the  demagogue,  the  man  who  has  little  to 
say  and  says  it  loud.  We  have  come  to  the 
age  of  the  mystagogue  or  don,  the  man  who  has 
nothing  to  say,  but  says  it  softly  and  impres- 
sively in  an  indistinct  whisper.  After  all, 
short  words  must  mean  something,  even  if 
they  mean  filth  or  lies;  but  long  words  may 
sometimes  mean  Hterally  nothing,  especially 
if  they  are  used  (as  they  mostly  are  in 
modern  books  and  magazine  articles)  to 
balance  and  modify  each  other.  A  plain 
figure   4,    scrawled    in   chalk    anywhere,    must 

235 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


always  mean  something;  it  must  always 
mean  2  +  2.  But  the  most  enormous  and 
mysterious  algebraic  equation,  full  of  letters, 
brackets,  and  fractions,  may  all  cancel  out  at 
last  and  be  equal  to  nothing.  When  a  dema- 
gogue says  to  a  mob,  "There  is  the  Bank  of 
England,  why  shouldn't  you  have  some  of 
that  money?"  he  says  something  which  is  at 
least  as  honest  and  intelligible  as  the  figure  4. 
When  a  writer  in  the  Times  remarks,  "We 
must  raise  the  economic  efficiency  of  the 
masses  without  diverting  anything  from  those 
classes  which  represent  the  national  pros- 
perity and  refinement,"  then  his  equation 
cancels  out;  in  a  literal  and  logical  sense  his 
remark  amounts  to  nothing. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  charlatans  or  people 
called  quacks  to-day.  The  power  of  the  first 
is  that  he  advertises — and  cures.  The  power 
of  the  second  is  that  though  he  Is  not  learned 
enough  to  cure  he  is  much  too  learned  to 
advertise.  The  former  give  away  their  dignity 
with  a  pound  of  tea;  the  latter  are  paid  a 
pound  of  tea  merely  for  being  dignified.  I  think 
them  the  worse  quacks  of  the  two.  Shaw  is 
certainly  of  the  other  sort.  Dickens,  another 
man  who  was  great  enough  to  be  a  demagogue 
(and  greater  than  Shaw  because  more  heartily 

236 


The  Philosopher 


a  demagogue),  puts  for  ever  the  true  difference 
between  the  demagogue  and  the  mystagogue  in 
Dr.  Mangold:  '*  Except  that  we're  cheap-jacks 
and  they're  dear-jacks,  I  don't  see  any  dif- 
ference between  us."  Bernard  Shaw  is  a  great 
cheap-jack,  with  plenty  of  patter  and  I  dare 
say  plenty  of  nonsense,  but  with  this  also 
(which  is  not  wholly  unimportant),  with 
goods  to  sell.  People  accuse  such  a  man 
of  self-advertisement.  But  at  least  the  cheap- 
jack  does  advertise  his  wares,  whereas  the  don 
or  dear-jack  advertises  nothing  except  himself. 
His  very  silence,  nay  his  very  sterility,  are 
supposed  to  be  marks  of  the  richness  of  his 
erudition.  He  is  too  learned  to  teach,  and 
sometimes  too  wise  even  to  talk.  St.  Thomas 
Aquinas  said:  "In  auctore  auctoritas."  But 
there  is  more  than  one  man  at  Oxford  or 
Cambridge  who  is  considered  an  authority 
because  he  has  never  been  an  author. 

Against  all  this  mystification  both  of  silence 
and  verbosity  Shaw  has  been  a  splendid  and 
smashing  protest.  He  has  stood  up  for  the 
fact  that  philosophy  is  not  the  concern  of  those 
who  pass  through  Divinity  and  Greats,  but  of 
those  who  pass  through  birth  and  death. 
Nearly  all  the  most  awful  and  abstruse  state- 
ments  can   be   put  in  words  of  one  syllable, 

^37 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


from  "A  child  is  born"  to  "A  soul  is 
damned. "^If  the  ordinary  man  may  not  dis- 
cuss existence,  why  should  he  be  asked  to 
conduct  it  ?  About  concrete  matters  indeed 
one  naturally  appeals  to  an  oligarchy  or  select 
class.  For  information  about  Lapland  I  go  to 
an  aristocracy  of  Laplanders;  for  the  ways  of 
rabbits  to  an  aristocracy  of  naturalists  or,  pref- 
erably, an  aristocracy  of  poachers.  But  only 
mankind  itself  can  bear  witness  to  the  abstract 
first  principles  of  mankind,  and  in  matters  of 
theory  I  would  always  consult  the  mob.  Only 
the  mass  of  men,  for  instance,  have  authority 
to  say  whether  life  is  good.  Whether  life  is 
good  is  an  especially  mystical  and  delicate 
question,  and,  like  all  such  questions,  is  asked 
in  words  of  one  syllable.  It  is  also  answered 
in  words  of  one  syllable,  and  Bernard  Shaw 
(as  also  mankind)  answers  "yes." 
<-  This  plain,  pugnacious  style  of  Shaw  has 
greatly  clarified  all  controversies.  He  has 
slain  the  polysyllable,  that  huge  and  slimy 
centipede  which  has  sprawled  over  all  the 
valleys  of  England  Hke  the  "loathly  worm" 
who  was  slain  by  the  ancient  knight.  He  does 
not  think  that  difficult  questions  will  be  made 
simpler  by  using  difficult  words  about  them. 
He  has  achieved  the  admirable  work,  never  to 

238 


The  Philosopher 


be  mentioned  without  gratitude,  of  discussing 
Evolution  without  mentioning  it.  The  good 
work  is  of  course  more  evident  in  the  case  of 
philosophy  than  any  other  region;  because 
the  case  of  philosophy  was  a  crying  one.  It 
was  really  preposterous  that  the  things  most 
carefully  reserved  for  the  study  of  two  or 
three  men  should  actually  be  the  things  com- 
mon to  all  mien.  It  was  absurd  that  certain 
men  should  be  experts  on  the  special  subject  of 
everything.  But  he  stood  for  much  the  same 
spirit  and  style  in  other  matters;  in  economics, 
for  example.  There  never  has  been  a  better 
popular  economist;  one  more  lucid,  enter- 
taining, consistent,  and  essentially  exact.  The 
very  comicality  of  his  examples  makes  them 
and  their  argument  stick  in  the  mind;  as  in 
the  case  I  remember  in  which  he  said  that  the 
big  shops  had  now  to  please  everybody,  and 
were  not  entirely  dependent  on  the  lady  who 
sails  in  "to  order  four  governesses  and  live 
grand  pianos."  He  is  always  preaching  collec- 
tivism; yet  he  does  not  very  often  name  it. 
He  does  not  talk  about  collectivism,  but 
about  cash;  of  which  the  populace  feel  a  much 
more  definite  need.  He  talks  about  cheese, 
boots,  perambulators,  and  how  people  are  really 
to    live.      'For    him    economics    really    means 

239 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


housekeeping,  as  it  does  in  Greek.  His 
difference  from  the  othodox  economists,  like 
most  of  his  differences,  is  very  different  from 
the  attacks  made  by  the  main  body  of  Socialists. 
The  old  Manchester  economists  are  generally 
attacked  for  being  too  gross  and  material. 
Shaw  really  attacks  them  for  not  being  gross 
or  material  enough.  He  thinks  that  they 
hide  themselves  behind  long  w^ords,  remote 
hypotheses  or  unreal  generalisations.  When 
the  orthodox  economist  begins  with  his  correct 
and  primary  formula,  "  Suppose  there  is  a 
Man  on  an  Island "  Shaw  is  apt  to  inter- 
rupt him  sharply,  saying,  "There  is  a  Man  in 
the  Street." 

The  second  phase  of  the  man's  really  fruitful 
efficacy  is  in  a  sense  the  converse  of  this.  He 
has  improved  philosophic  discussions  by 
making  them  more  popular.  But  he  has  also 
improved  popular  amusements  by  making  them 
more  philosophic.  And  by  more  philosophic 
I  do  not  mean  duller,  but  funnier;  that  is 
more  varied.  All  real  fun  is  in  cosmic  con- 
trasts, which  involve  a  view  of  the  cosmos. 
But  I  know  that  this  second  strength  in  Shaw 
is  really  difficult  to  state  and  must  be 
approached  by  explanations  and  even  by 
eliminations.     Let  me  say  at  once  that  I  think 

240 


The  Philosopher 


nothing  of  Shaw  or  anybody  else  merely  for 
playing  the  daring  sceptic.  I  do  not  think  he 
has  done  any  good  or  even  achieved  any  effect 
simply  by  asking  startling  questions.  It  is 
possible  that  there  have  been  ages  so  sluggish 
or  automatic  that  anything  that  woke  them  up 
at  all  was  a  good  thing.  It  is  sufficient  to  be 
certain  that  ours  is  not  such  an  age.  We  do 
not  need  waking  up;  rather  we_^suffer  from 
insomnia,  with  all  its  results  of  fear  and  ex- 
aggeration and  frightful  waking  dreams.  The 
modern  mind  is  not  a  donkey  which  wants 
kicking  to  make  it  go  on.  The  modern  mind 
is  more  like  a  motor-car  on  a  lonely  road 
which  two  amateur  motorists  have  been  just 
clever  enough  to  take  to  pieces,  but  are  not 
quite  clever  enough  to  put  together  again. 
Under  these^ircumstances  kicking  the  car  has 
never  been  found  by  the  best  experts  to  be 
effective.  No  one,  therefore,  does  any  good 
to  our  age  merely  by  asking  questions — unless 
he  can  answer  the  questions.  Asking  questions 
is  already  the  fashionable  and  aristocratic  sport 
which  has  brought  most  of  us  into  the 
bankruptcy  court.  The  note  of  our  age  is  a 
note  of  interrogation.  And  the  final  point  is 
so  plain;  no  sceptical  philosopher  can  ask  any 
questions  that  may  not  equally  be  asked  by  a 

P  241 


George  Bernard  Shaiv 


tired  child  on  a  hot  afternoon.  *'Am  I  a 
boy  ? — Why  am  I  a  boy  ? — Why  aren't  I  a 
chair  ? — What  is  a  chair  ?"  A  child  will  some- 
times ask  questions  of  this  sort  for  two  hours. 
And  the  philosophers  of  Protestant  Europe 
have  asked  them  for  two  hundred  years. 

If  that  were  all  that  I  meant  by  Shaw 
making  men  more  philosophic,  I  should  put  it 
not  among  his  good  influences  but  his  bad. 
He  did  do  that  to  some  extent;  and  so  far  he 
is  bad.  But  there  is  a  much  bigger  and  better 
sense  in  which  he  has  been  a  philosopher.  He 
has  brought  back  into  English  drama  all  the 
streams  of  fact  or  tendency  which  are  commonly 
called  undramatic.  They  were  there  in 
Shakespeare's  time;  but  they  have  scarcely 
been  there  since  until  Shaw.  I  mean  that 
Shakespeare,  being  interested  in  everything, 
put  everything  into  a  play.  If  he  had  lately 
been  thinking  about  the  irony  and  even  con- 
tradiction confronting  us  in  self-preservation 
and  suicide,  he  put  it  all  into  Hamlet.  If  he 
was  annoyed  by  some  passing  boom  in  theatrical 
babies  he  put  that  into  Hamlet  too.  He  would 
put  anything  into  Hamlet  which  he  really 
thought  was  true,  from  his  favourite  nursery 
ballads  to  his  personal  (and  perhaps  unfashion- 
able)   conviction    of   the    Catholic    purgatory. 

242 


The  Philosopher 


There  is  no  fact  that  strikes  one,  I  think,  about 
Shakespeare,  except  the  fact  of  how  dramatic 
he  could  be,  so  much  as  the  fact  of  how 
undramatic  he  could  be. 

In  this  great  sense  Shaw  has  brought  philo- 
sophy back  into  drama — philosophy  in  the 
sense  of  a  certain  freedom  of  the  mind.  This 
is  not  a  freedom  to  think  what  one  likes 
(which  is  absurd,  for  one  can  only  think  what 
one  thinks);  it  is  a  freedom  to  think  about 
what  one  likes,  which  is  quite  a  different  thing 
and  the  spring  of  all  thought.  Shakespeare 
(in  a  weak  moment,  I  think)  said  that  all  the 
world  is  a  stage.  But  Shakespeare  acted  on 
the  much  finer  principle  that  a  stage  is  all  the 
world.  So  there  are  in  all  Bernard  Shaw's 
plays  patches  of  what  people  would  call  essen- 
tially undramatic  stuflF,  which  the  dramatist 
puts  in  because  he  is  honest  and  would  rather 
prove  his  case  than  succeed  with  his  play. 
Shaw  has  brought  back  into  English  drama 
that  Shakespearian  universality  which,  if  you 
like,  you  can  call  Shakespearian  irrelevance. 
Perhaps  a  better  definition  than  either  is  a 
habit  of  thinking  the  URth-  worth  telling 
even  when  you  meet  it  by  accident.  JLn-Shaw's 
plays^one  meets  an  incredible  number  of  truths 
by  accident. 

243 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


To  be  up  to  date  is  a  paltry  ambition  except 
in  an  almanac,  and  Shaw  has  sometimes  talked 
this  almanac  philosophy.  Nevertheless  there 
is  a  real  sense  in  which  the  phrase  may  be 
wisely  used,  and  that  is  in  cases  where  some 
stereotyped  version  of  what  is  happening  hides 
what  is  really  happening  from  our  eyes.  Thus, 
for  instance,  newspapers  are  never  up  to  date. 
The  men  who  write  leading  articles  are  always 
behind  the  times,  because  they  are  in  a  hurry. 
They  are  forced  to  fall  back  on  their  old- 
fashioned  view  of  things;  they  have  no  time 
to  fashion  a  new  one.  Everything  that  is 
done  in  a  hurry  is  certain  to  be  antiquated; 
that  is  why  modern  industrial  civilisation  bears 
so  curious  a  resemblance  to  barbarism.  Thus 
when  newspapers  say  that  the  Times  is  a 
solemn  old  Tory  paper,  they  are  out  of  date; 
their  talk  is  behind  the  talk  in  Fleet  Street. 
Thus  when  newspapers  say  that  Christian 
dogmas  are  crumbling,  they  are  out  of  date; 
their  talk  is  behind  the  talk  in  public-houses. 
Now  in  this  sense  Shaw  has  kept  in  a  really 
stirring  sense  up  to  date.  He  has  introduced 
into  the  theatre  the  things  that  no  one  else 
had  introduced  into  a  theatre — the  things  in 
the  street  outside.  The  theatre  is  a  sort 
of  thing  which   proudly   sends   a   hansom-cab 

244 


The  Philosopher 


across  the  stage  as  Realism,  while  everybody 
outside  is  whistling  for  motor-cabs. 

Consider  in  this  respect  how  many  and  fine 
have  been  Shaw's  intrusions  into  the  theatre 
with  the  things  that  were  really  going  on.  Daily 
papers  and  daily  matinees  were  still  gravely 
explaining  how  much  modern  war  depended 
on  gunpowder.  Arms  and  the  Man  explained 
how  much  modern  war  depends  on  chocolate. 
Every  play  and  paper  described  the  Vicar  who 
was  a  mild. Conservative.  Candida  caught  hold 
of  the  modern  Vicar  who  is  an  advanced 
Socialist.  Numberless  magazine  articles  and 
society  comedies  describe  the  emancipated 
woman  as  new  and  wild.  Only  Tou  Never  Can 
Tell  was  young  enough  to  see  that  the  emanci- 
pated woman  is  already  old  and  respectable. 
Every  comic  paper  has  caricatured  the  un- 
educated upstart.  Only  the  author  of  Man 
and  Superman  knew  enough  about  the  modern 
world  to  caricature  the  educated  upstart — the 
man  Straker  who  can  quote  Beaumarchais, 
though  he  cannot  pronounce  him.  This  is 
the  second  real  and  great  work  of  Shaw — the 
letting  in  of  the  world  on  to  the  stage,  as 
the  rivers  were  let  in  upon  the  Augean  Stable. 
He  has  let  a  little  of  the  Haymarket  into  the  J 
Haymarket  Theatre.     He  has  permitted  some 

245 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


whispers  of  the  Strand  to  enter  the  Strand 
Theatre.  [A  variety  of  solutions  in  philosophy 
is  as  silly  as  it  is  in  arithmetic,  but  one  may 
be  justly  proud  of  a  variety  of  materials  for 
a  solution.  After  Shaw,  one  may  say,  there  is 
nothing  that  cannot  be  introduced  into  a  play 
if  one  can  make  it  decent,  amusing,  and  rele- 
vant J  The  state  of  a  man's  health,  the  religion 
of  his  childhood,  his  ear  for  music,  or  his 
ignorance  of  cookery  can  all  be  made  vivid  if 
they  have  anything  to  do  with  the  subject.  A 
soldier  may  mention  the  commissariat  as  well 
as  the  cavalry;  and,  better  still,  a  priest  may 
mention  theology  as  well  as  religion.  That 
is  being  a  philosopher;  that  is  bringing  the 
universe  on  the  stage. 

OLastly,  he  has  obliterated  the  mere  cynic. 
He  has  been  so  much  more  cynical  than  any- 
one else  for  the  public  good  that  no  one  has 
dared  since  to  be  really  cynical  for  anything 
smaller.  The  Chinese  crackers  of  the  frivolous 
cynics  fail  to  excite  us  after  the  dynamite  of 
the  serious  and  aspiring  cynic.  Bernard  Shaw 
and  I  (who  are  growing  grey  together)  can 
remember  an  epoch  which  many  of  his 
followers  do  not  know:  an  epoch  of  real 
pessimism.  The  years  from  1885  ^o  ^^9^ 
were    like   the   hours   of  afternoon   in    a    rich 

246 


The  Philosopher 


house  with  large  rooms;  the  hours  before 
tea-time.  They  beHeved  in  nothing  except 
good  manners;  and  the  essence  of  good 
manners  is  to  conceal  a  yawn.  A  yawn  may 
be  defined  as  a  silent  yell.  The  power  which 
the  young  pessimist  of  that  time  showed  in 
this  direction  would  have  astonished  anyone 
but  him.  He  yawned  so  wide  as  to  swallow 
the  world.  He  swallowed  the  world  like  an 
unpleasant  pill  before  retiring  to  an  eternal 
rest.  Now  the  last  and  best  glory  of  Shaw 
is  that  in  the  circles  where  this  creature  was 
found,  he  is  not.  He  has  not  been  killed  (I 
don't  know  exactly  why),  but  he  has  actually 
turned  into  a  Shaw  idealist.  This  is  no  ex- 
aggeration, I  meet  men  who,  when  I  knew 
them  in  1898,  were  just  a  little  too  lazy  to 
destroy  the  universe.  They  are  now  con- 
scious of  not  being  quite  worthy  to  abolish 
some  prison  regulations.  This  destruction 
and  conversion  seem  to  me  the  mark  of 
something  actually  great.  It  is  always  great 
to  destroy  a  type  without  destroying  a  man. 
The  followers  of  Shaw  are  optimists;  some 
of  them  are  so  simple  as  even  to  use  the 
word.  They  are  sometimes  rather  pallid  op- 
timists, frequently  very  worried  optimists, 
occasionally,    to    tell    the    truth,    rather    cross 

247 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


optimists:  but  they  not  pessimists;  they 
can  exult  though  they  cannot  laugh.  He  has 
at  least  withered  up  among  them  the  mere 
pose  of  impossibility.  Like  every  great 
teacher,  he  has  cursed  the  barren  fig-tree. 
For  nothing  except  that  impossibility  is  really 
impossible. 


I  know  it  is  all  very  strange.  From  the 
height  of  eight  hundred  years  ago,  or  of  eight 
hundred  years  hence,  our  age  must  look  in- 
credibly odd.  We  call  the  twelfth  century 
ascetic.  We  call  our  own  time  hedonist  and 
full  of  praise  and  pleasure.  But  in  the  ascetic 
age  the  love  of  life  was  evident  and  enormous, 
so  that  it  had  to  be  restrained.  In  an  hedonist 
age  pleasure  has  always  sunk  low,  so  that  it 
has  to  be  encouraged.  How  high  the  sea  of 
human  happiness  rose  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
we  now  only  know  by  the  colossal  walls  that 
they  built  to  keep  it  in  bounds^jHow  low 
human  happiness  sank  in  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury our  children  will  only  know  by  these 
extraordinary  modern  books,  which  tell  people 
that  it  is  a  duty  to  be  cheerful  and  that  life  is 
not  so  bad  after  all.  Humanity  never  pro- 
duces optimists  till  it  has  ceased  to  produce 

248 


The  Philosopher 


happy  men.  It  is  strange  to  be  obliged  to 
impose  a  holiday  like  a  fast,  and  to  drive  men 
to  a  banquet  with  spears.  But  this  shall  be 
written  of  our  time:  that  when  the  spirit  who 
denies  besieged  the  last  citadel,  blaspheming 
life  itself,  there  were  some,  there  was  one 
especially,  whose  voice  was  heard  and  whose 
spear  was  never  broken. 


THE    END 


249 


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THE   COMPLETE  WORKS 

OF 

WILLIAM  J.  LOCKE 

**LlFE    IS    A    GLORIOUS    THING." — W,  J.    Lockt 

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The  Morals  of  Marcus  Ordeyne  The  Demagogue  and  Lady  Phayre 

At  the  Gate  of  Samaria  The  Beloved  Vagabond 

A  Study  in  Shadows  The  White  Dove 

Where  Love  Is  The  Usurper 

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Where  Love  Is 

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**  One  of  those  unusual  novels  of  which  the  end  ia  as  good  a^  the 

beginning." — New  York  Globe. 


WILLIAM  J.  LOCKE 

The  Usurper 

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manship and  the  constant  dramatic  intensity  of  the  incident,  situ- 
ations and  climax," — The  Boston  Herald, 

Derelicts 

**  Mr.  Locke  tells  his  story  in  a  very  true,  a  very  moving,  and  a 
very  noble  book.  If  any  one  can  read  the  last  chapter  with  dry 
eyes  we  shall  be  surprised.  *  Derelicts  *  is  an  impressive,  an  im- 
portant book.  Yvonne  is  a  creation  that  any  artist  might  be  proud 
oV—The  Daily  Chronicle, 

Idols 

"One  of  the  very  few  distinguished  novels  of  this  present  book 
season." — The  Daily  Mail. 

"  A  brilliantly  written  and  eminently  readable  book." 

—  The  London  Daily  Telegraph, 

A  Study  in  Shadows 

♦'Mr.  Locke  has  achieved  a  distinct  success  in  this  novel.  He  has 
struck  many  emotional  chords,  and  struck  them  all  with  a  firm, 
sure  hand.  In  the  relations  between  Katherine  and  Raine  he  had 
a  delicate  problem  to  handle,  and  he  has  handled  it  delicately." 

—  The  Daily  Chronicle. 

The  White  Dove 

"  It  is  an  interesting  story.  The  characters  are  strongly  conceived 
and  vividly  presented,  and  the  dramatic  moments  are  powerfully 
realized." — The  Morning  Post, 

The  Demagogue  and  Lady  Phayre 

"Think  of  Locke's  clever  books.  Then  think  of  a  book  as  differ- 
ent from  any  cf  these  as  one  can  well  imagine — that  will  be  Mr. 
Locke's  new  book." — New  York  World, 

At  the  Gate  of  Samaria 

♦'  William  J.  Locke's  novels  are  nothing  if  not  unusuaL  They  are 
marked  by  a  quaint  originality.  The  habitual  novel  reader  inevi* 
tably  is  grateful  for  a  refreshing  sense  of  escaping  the  common* 
plao«  parth  of  conclusion. " — Chicago  Record- Herald,  ^ 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  Is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below, 
or  on  the  date  to  which  renewed.  Renewals  only: 

Tel.  No.  642-3405 
Renewals  may  be  made  4  days  prior  to  date  due. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 

g[;rp  jfi     AUG  13  73-1  PM 

JUL  1 7  1977 


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